HolyWar
by Ender1030
Summary: The Endwar rages and the Russians and Europeans discover the fury of combat and technology, the war reaches the Holy land as Israel fights against its neighbors.  Who will be left standing on all sides? Runs parallel with the events of Sea of Eternal Sun
1. prologue

AN: This is the second of what i plan to be 3 Endwar fanfictions, the first concerning the war between the US and Europe, now we turn our eyes to the European theater and the Russians. At the same time Israel continues to stand against its hostile neighbors. I keep with Tom Clancy's style and I understand that there were people complaining about how Sea of The Eternal Sun was basically a carbon copy of Red Storm Rising and i will readily admit it was. I put very little work into it. Here though is completely my own thoughts and ideas, so feel free to comment- Scratch i BEG you to comment and critique it. I plan to become a real author in the future so every little bit will help me develop. Thanks people, and shoot straight.

History will always repeat itself.

More than eighty years since the last world war, the Great Patriotic War some still call it, and our love of peace has come to an end. The Arabics, with their zealous and radical beliefs have finally destroyed each other in a way befitting them. And now Russia holds all the oil. What a scramble the other nations have made! Now we hold the money and the arms. We have risen back onto the world stage where we have always belonged.

They will all pay for their gall, their arrogance. We have turned the allied Missile defense web against itself, and now the damn Europeans and Americans all squabble amongst themselves for petty revenge. We have always had the true motive in our sights.

Iran and Saudi Arabia's war have created a deadzone, neutralizing their precious oil which is how we have come to rise to our position in the first place. But there are still countries that have the black gold, which we must take.

The North Africans are under a mutual alliance with the European Federation just as the Canadians with the Americans. The Israelis now economically control most of what remains of the Middle East's oil. We must take that. The other muslim countries will not intervene, rather they will praise our efforts to rid them of the jewish pests. But once the Europeans see this, surely they will launch counter offensives to stall our efforts, allied with Israel or not.

The People of the Rodina, the motherland, have never forgotten how the French, the Germans, all of them in fact once spat in our faces as they cowered in fear at the sound of our nuclear missiles. They do so again.

But we will strike hard, like the hammer and reap their blood with the blade of the sickle. They will learn what it means to fight a war against _Russia_.

History may always repeat itself, but we will be the ones to change that.

President Kapalkin's personal diary.


	2. Initiative

0700 Tel Aviv.

This truly was the promised land, Patricia Dolan reflected. A land that flowed with milk and honey metaphorically turned out to be a land with one of the highest standards of living and with arguably the most beautiful beaches since Waikiki had been discovered. The morning surfers, the hardcore that rose at the crack of dawn like soldiers, were just turning in for a second breakfast and bonfires could be seen rising on the beach like so many other days.

Was it only ten years ago that rising smoke had brought fear to this country? Dolan turned away from the beachview window and sipped her coffee. No such things still often brought fear, the Palestinian Libertation Initiative still conducted the occasional attack or suicide bombing. The coffee was black, the best way to jolt up from a night of long work and anxiety. Her dress suit, identical to all the other dress suits in her wardrobe (navy blue, with a white blouse under) had recently been dry cleaned and was hung up on the doorknob. She dressed in silence preparing herself for what was probably going to be another long work day.

The last thing she attatched to herself aside from her planner, Macbook, and purse was her ID tag: Special Agent Patricia Dolan, Federal Bureau of Intelligence.

The FBI had a good working relationship with the Mossad Israeli Intelligence and Special Operations Center here, and while she hated to admit it, the Israeli spies definitely knew their stuff. If there was any one giant misconception about anything that was Hollywood, it was probably that being a spy involved tuxedos, Vodka martinis, flashy big breasted women and lots of explosions. Not true to Dolans experience, it was often boring and monotonous and she certainly didn't have any silly nicknames like "Jynx" and had never met a man with metal shark teeth before.

Except in the case of the Mossad. The FBI and CIA trained their agents to stay under the radar, to seek intelligence and report back to their superiors so that it could be used later. The Israeli spy boys were more…impulsive. Understandably so, since their history often had a need for instant results with little or no time for consultance the Jewish spies, it seemed like anyway, often got the best "action" out of any intelligence community in the world. They had a knack for pulling off those Hollywood stunts Dolan had only dreamed of, assassinations and terrorist hunting seemed to be genetically imprinted into these men and women who were still being drafted right out of highschool.

It was a ten minute walk over to the Mossad's main building from her beach apartment. The streets were full of cars and smells of good food that wafted and floated among the leaves that were buoyed up by the sea breeze. The people were happy, totally oblivious to the events that had taken place the night before. The sea breeze was replaced by cool air conditioning as Dolan opened the door and entered the marble lobby of the Mossad.

"Morning Pat." The male agent called with a charming smile.

"Morning Saul." Dolan replied and stepped into her air conditioned office, the weather even by Tel Aviv's beachfront was murderously hot. "Tea?" she asked, he liked it. Saul shook his head and lifted his already full mug.

"Was up all night." Saul said and placed a manilla envelope on Dolan's desk. "Take a look at this."

A GPS image (Google earth she noted dryly) of several cities had red marks on them.

"The cells?" Patricia said after a moments glance.

"Most successful counterterrorism raid in Israeli history." Saul nodded. "You do good work for an American."

The FBI agent gave a modest shrug to hide her smugness. The Israelis were very good at gathering intelligence on other countries, but on domestic problems and counterterrorism, it was the Bureau that excelled in that field. It was the culmination of two years of work of finding solid sources, building up trust (financially or sexually, that was something James Bond hadn't faked much) and then a massive paramilitary police raid on dozens of supposed terrorists homes and cell headquarters across the country. Its what had kept her up half the night, listening to the radios as the simultaneous raids took place.

She'd volunteered for the liaison here in Tel Aviv. She was a Jewish girl, albeit proud but nonpracticing. New York was her hometown but Tel Aviv, well that was her home. Home was where the heart was right?

Her home wouldn't be threatened by the Palestenian Liberation Initiative terrorists any longer. This might break the entire organizations backbone for undoubtedly they were all connected and one person would lead to another…

"How many have talked?" She asked as she flipped through the mugshots of the men and women they rounded up. God, this one could only have been sixteen! They recruited them so young.

"A lot of them." Saul nodded "the wounded ones you know, they-"

"I know." Patricia cut him off quickly. Operational deniability was the name of the game here. The preferred method of interrogation was drug induced, and that was easily covered up by medical injections and necessities. Vicodene, proved to be particularly potent in a carefully overdosed amount. And of course that was illegal, but she could truthfully say she didn't know how the prisoners were being interrogated if Saul didn't tell her.

"But will this bring them down?" Saul asked.

"It'll hurt them." She said and took note that the raid had taken nearly a hundred and six supposed terrorists. "But remember these members are probably only part of the bomb making or delivering cell. That's the tricky part about this stuff, its much like the army. The organization is divided with each cell having a part to play, and with one master cell which controls all of them. They can't do anything without one of them but it won't stop them. It gives us maybe a couple months of clean streets hopefully."

"If we take out the head then, obviously the rest will collapse." Saul nodded.

"Unless a subordinate rises to the occasion, then this process begins all over again." Dolan shook her head. "Like the hydra, cant keep on chopping off their heads."

"We need to burn the stumps." Saul said, referencing the old legend as well.

"Tell the boys to be thorough in their interrogations." Dolan said and rubbed her temples. The job of an FBI analyst was often thankless and tedious, but so was most spy work in the world. "I'll be with them shortly."

It was good to be getting so much stick time again. Reilly "Bronco" Winters only regret about flying for Artemis Corp. was that he wasn't flying the F-22 any longer. The United States Air Force raptor was the sweetest plane in the sky. Best interceptor out there by far, like the handsome grandson of the F-15 Eagle. Israel had probably some of the best flying weather in the world, clear blue skies, rather cloudless so there wasn't anyone that could be hiding behind cloud cover, hardly any rain, the sandstorms even tended to avoid what most people still referred to as "The Holy Land". Dogfighting weather this surely was.

But he was flying an F-35C, the short ranged interceptor version of the venerable F-35 Lightning Joint Strike Fighter. It wasn't too bad of a deal, the controls were a little more sluggish than the nimble Raptors, but the radar system was top notch thanks to the geeks on the ground. And of course the money was real good too.

"All flights check in." the E-7 Eagle Eye AWACs craft overseeing the drill, call sign "Avatar" called out to Bronco.

"Reaper flight, check." Bronco said into the mike. Artemis had sent a squadron of Lightnings and a squadron of the new A-20 Razorback ground attack fighter (export quality of course) to help the Israeli Air Defense Force on consulting business. Being nice guys, Artemis let them stage mock air wars, this being the first. Bronco was armed with nothing more deadly than simulated electronic missiles and a laser target designator to simulate bullets.

"Jackal flight check." The OpFor called. Well, technically the Artemis fighters were playing Opposition Force this time. Bronco and his partners were big bad wolves. Twelve F-35s against two flights of mixed F-15 Indias (the Israeli export model of the venerable eagle) and F-16 Indias (the Israeli export model of the Falcon).

"Begin the exercise." Avatar ordered, and authority went down to each sides individual AWACS craft, each a hundred miles away from each other, practically half the entire length of Israel.

Israeli pilots had the skill to match their top of the line fighters, but the Artemis flyers had generation 5 aircraft and much more experience. Aerial dogfighting in this day and age was more often than not in the hands of the AWACS crew. The AWACS big bulge radars capable of detecting enemy fighters up to two hundred miles away enabled the Artemis pilots to immediately tag enemy fighters on their heads up displays, and the aging turbo prop driven E-2 Hawkeye attatched to Reaper flight, call sign "Oracle", had a crew with twenty years of war experience together.

"Reaper this is Oracle, bandits tallied on radar one eight zero angels thirty. Range one hundred, closing six hundred knots; you are weapons free."

"Reaper Lead," Bronco flipped the squadron channel on. "Plan Delta, execute."

The squadron of sixteen switched to three groups, one group of eight and two groups of four, with Bronco leading the largest. He flipped his air search radar on while the other two groups fanned left and right. They should be getting radar pings right now from the group of eight. But they would look like twelve fighters trying for radar locks. Four of the F-35s Artemis had loaned were F-35Es, equipped for short range jamming and target acquisition for the Navy, almost a mini AWACS without the super long ranged big bulge radar. The F-35E (colloquially and backhandedly known as the "Queer") balanced its awesome scout and electronics power with reduced firepower. Only a pair of simulated sidewinders could be loaded along with its cannon.

"Good lock." He reported along with the other seven Lightnings. They held their fire, giving the enemy time to break locks and fire diversionary chaff and flares. Bronco wanted them scattered, they'd lose coordination and the chaff and flares would make it easier to spot them. Not that the Queers could shoot with their Sidewinders anyway, they were short range heat seekers.

The locks remained, so they realized that the Artemis fliers weren't shooting, so they weren't dodging. They'd home in straight for the Americans and try to take them down with heat seekers, the F-35 had great radar absorbent material. It had to be heat seekers or cannon. It wasn't going according to plan Delta.

But it definitely was going according to plan Echo.

"Tallyho, eyes on the AWACS." Reaper four called. "Fox three!" Reaper four fired a simulated radar seeking missile.

"Good kill Reaper four." Avatar said a few moments later. "Arbiter you are Endex."

"Good kill Ratchet." Winters said using his pilots personal call sign. Without their AWACS the enemy wouldn't coordinate, they'd be totally blind to what the Artemis pilots could do, and a blind opponent was a dead opponent. "Reaper flight, fire at will." And he set his words to action, thumbing the pickle button on his stick to toggle up his simulated Quarrel AIM-10 radar guided missile. "Fox three!"

"Mohammed, brother" Dolan's voice was very soothing when she wanted it to be, so much the better sometimes, to lure men to her bedroom. But that wasn't the case here. "Mohammed do you hear me?" she said in Arabic, she was fluent in that from her time here.

"Yes, yes who is that?" the man shook his head and pressed his hands to the cast that covered his face from the nose up. He was in a drugged stupor, and very easily persuaded.

"It is your sister, Isabel." Dolan said remembering what she had read on the man's personal files. "You are in a Syrian hospital now. Those raids, brother, those raids…" she let her voice trail off and her lip tremble even though the terrorist couldn't see.

"Why… why cant I see!" he cried in dismay and tried to tear at the cast the doctors had put in place.

"Your eyes have been cut brother. The Israeli raids. The doctor Farad said he got much of the fragments out and will be healing them with cell grafts but it will take some time. I am sorry."

"_Inshallah_." The man responded and his head hung in a way that looked like he was carefully coming to grips with it or about to nod off.

"Mohammed we need to contact our leader." Dolan said, she had fancied herself a pretty good actor back in high school and this is where all that experience would help. Not bad for a Special Agent working on a doctorate in psychology, not bad at all. "we need to notify them who is alive and what we should do?"

"The number on the bill sister, I am so sorry I have brought this upon you…" the terrorist wept.

"No no." Dolan said quickly and rifled through the wallet to find the worn faded restaurant bill. Yes there was a telephone number written on it. They had such a clever way of hiding these things. "it is our sacrifice for the cause. You serve Allah well."

"_Allahu Akbar."_ The brother said sleepily.

"The name brother? We need the name."

"Russian…chap…" he mumbled. "Petrov…Ivan" the man drifted off into dreamland.

"Suck on that Darth Vader." Special Agent Patricia Dolan said in English and shut the MP3 recorder off. These terrorists were receiving direction from a Russian? It took her two minutes to head down to the lobby where her laptop and Saul were waiting for her. She let Saul listen to the recording while she accessed the IICs personal database and ran through the name "Ivan Petrov".

"Okay Ivan, you want to screw with the Mossad?" Dolan said through gritted teeth as she shot another subordinate an email and narrowed her search for recent immigrants between five or six years ago. That's when a spy probably would have come here she reasoned. "Don't cry when we beat you boy, cause down here we play for keeps."


	3. Dosvodinia

2000 Paris

The Europeans could see them. Could see every single thing the Russians did with their damn satellites. Their military GPS systems were among the most advanced in the world, their imaging systems _were_ the best in the world, and Russian Army movements were not an invisible thing.

"What have we here Colonel?" General Armandou de Bankole, supreme commander of European Forces said. A former member of the Rainbow Counterterrorist unit, intelligence he knew was everything. The map display was the newest in holographic technology and spanned on the Federations entire western frontier, where the Russians loomed. The colonel, a Spaniard named Gonzales tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. She was from the Logistics and Intelligence division of the European Enforcer Corp. She was a pencil pusher, a woman who hadn't the backbone to lead fellow countrymen onto the battlefield but able to supply them with weapons to slaughter themselves with. Bankole hated these people. But Sun Tzu's art of war stated that one cannot move without Intelligence so he endured.

"General, the Russian alliance have massed troops along our borders for the last six months claiming combat exercise performance. They have done this publicly and have offered no provocation." She said quickly. Bankole nodded stiffly, she was reviewing old news to him. The last L&I colonel was "transferred" over to that front, where he would remain until he redeemed the honor he lost for serving in a noncombatant post. Bankole wasn't even French, he was Algerian by birth but even he knew what honor was and that man had none. This woman, smart enough to rise to this post, was being stupid and wasting his time on a briefing that she obviously thought she following as per procedures (which were never meant to be taken literally). "And you General have matched their moves by reinforcing our eastern border. Conducting combat excercises as well." She continued oblivious to the aura of scorn Bankole was sure he was emanating.

He had killed more terrorists with honor than this woman. He didn't want to waste his time on the eastern front, he had the Americans to the west and their military had a history for not losing many wars. Had it only been a week since the destruction of their _Freedom IV_ lifter? A mistake which the Americans saw as an act of war? They were arrogant and would be dealt with soon. But Bankole had to pay attention to the threat here.

"Among the Russian forces, our Satellites have catalogued twelve of their army groups composed of heavy Tank divisions and Motor Rifle Regiments along with the majority of their air forces. Along the Swedish border there are a quarter of those numbers."

"Too much for a mere combat exercise." Bankole finished for her. The Spaniard nodded oblivious.

"Their unit readiness appears to be excellent. All of their army groups at the front now, are composed of A class armies and there are another ten a hundred kilometers behind the front of the same type."

"Class A?" Bankole stroked his chin in surprise "They cannot field so many top armies, the logistics alone would be a nightmare you yourself should appreciate."

Gonzales shook her head. "If you refer to the age of their equipment General I fear that we were greatly mistaken about this. You remember the declaration that the Russians, in response to pressure from both the Americans and our government to disarm their Strategic Rocket Forces?"

Bankole did. The Russians had taken down all of their nuclear missiles and scrapped them including much of their aging equipment, leftovers from the 1980s, tanks, planes even entire ship classes in their navy were scrapped.

"The Russians" the analyst said "used that opportunity to remove old units they had to maintain and replaced them with their top of the line equipment. They've secretly taken control of many of their civilian plants in Siberia to meet their production standards. In other words, if we factor that into the equation we have here-" she gestured with her laptop stylus at the holodisplay – " we can be quite sure that these are all heavy duty shock armies."

"They'll roll over our comrades in Poland." Bankole covered his mouth to hide the shock. The thought of twelve Class A armies rolling over the Eastern front was akin to taking a bulldozer to squash an anthill. Bankole had ten Enforcer battlegroups on that front but they were not expecting a fully equipped modernized foe. And the enemy had ten of the same type in reserve!

Roughly ten thousand troops fighting Five hundred thousand. They could not hold their border but his troops would be able to put up quite a fight. Most of those troops were veterans of the Insurrectionists that had threatened the formation of the Federation not so long ago. And the Russians would not be so foolish as to swarm the border, not with the Europeans laser defense satellites in place. He could vaporize those armies one at a time.

"That is not all." Gonzales said and typed a command on her laptop to bring up several new markers that appeared as red stars all across the Russian border. "at these areas we believe there to be ASAT missiles, capable-"

"Of neutralizing our Satellites." Bankole shook his head again. They had done this beautifully, snuck all of those right under the noses of the European Federation. He always respected an intelligent and deceptive enemy.

"They would not be so foolish as to use WMDs to blast holes in our line?" he asked.

"No. If Russia wants the respect of the world, they will not do such a thing."

"This army threat is real then."

"Yes."

"What of the Ukraine, Finnish and the troops from the other countries?"

"I assume they are being held in reserve, their technology is not as modern as the Russians themselves, I would classify them as type B armies and will probably be using them to hold land."

Bankole squeezed the bridge of his nose to concentrate then nodded.

"I will brief the president soon then. Alert Satellite command to begin evasive burns on our satellites. How soon will we be able to deploy reserves to the east?"

"It will take them at least a week till they reach Poland, If we begin mobilizing our forward armies now, they could reach the Polish front in little over a day" Most of the Enforcer armies were located in France.

"The Russians could not be more ready for an assault than they are now. Move 10th, through 30th Mechanized to that front immediately and send our front commanders war warnings. The Russians are coming." Bankole said.

Ivan Gregoriavich was a Russian Merchant. Or at least that's what the credit cards and false passports said about him. Most of it was lies, except for the picture of course. But the Mossad did manage to grab an IP address that he commonly used (which was at a small off the side Internet Café) and it didn't take much for the computer warfare geeks to plant snooper viruses into the man's Email and Instant Messaging accounts (which invariably lead to the personal connection sites he frequented). Almost as soon as Dolan ordered the spyware to be activated, it began churning up gold. There were just two numbers and linked site on one Email. A bank account, a password, and the site for which the account could be activated. And after firmly asking both banks to release files, Dolan found that there had been a total of several _billion_ dollars transferred to anonymous accounts all over the Middle East, banks whose countries were not at all fond of the Israelis. She checked the other emails. The "trash folder" was a joke. On such a public email she was able to pull up stuff this Gregoriavich had thought to be a bad memory. Five emails had been sent to five accounts. All displaying an identical message: a date and a time.

"Here." The techie said as the hot printer spat out its latest. The work done here was _fast_ if it involved computers, Israeli hackers (they preferred the term "cyber warfare infiltrators") were among the best in the world, and some of even their private sites had security firewalls that the CIA and NSA would be frustrated with. "we linked up the IP addresses; five emails, five countries. All of our border neighbors aren't happy with us."

"Get that to the director." Dolan said and rubbed her temples. "He needs to know that we're going to be expecting an attack at that time and date."

It would have to hurry, the attack would come the next day.

0200 3rd Shock Army on the west border of Ukraine

It was two AM by delicate European times. And the Russians were mobilizing. All across the two hundred kilometer front the army groups were beginning their final preparations. The SVU (Russian intelligence network) directed Strategic Rocket Forces under direct command of Pavel Leonardovich Gorobov, CINCWEST, elevated their ASAT- three stage tridium tipped missiles pointing them skyward. It would be a massive coordinated assault, strategic surprise it appeared had been achieved else the Europeans would be bombing these missile would they not? That or they would have at least addressed the concern. Their army had the strength of a bear, mauling their way across the land till they reached the European capital and secured it but those satellites had the capability of destroying them in the blink of an eye and must be destroyed.

CINCWEST's plan was elaborate but he'd been training his twelve armies into crack divisions in these past six months, and the coordination that would be required on this sort of level of assault would be unmatched by any of the history books.

The Flash message from Moscow came to his headquarters, a single word that would start his war.

_Dosvodinia_. Goodbye. Operation Horizon was now in effect.

He forwarded this on the radio to the forward telecommunications outposts where it was forwarded to the advanced teams that had already infiltrated in the Federation. CINCWEST had unleashed the wolves on the sheep of Europe. All across the border, the Russian war machine rumbled to life like an angry giant poised to strike on a command.

0230 Berlin Enforcer Corp rear echelon CP

A Mercedes stretch limousine, black and custom manufactured, for some reason never aroused suspicion among any local police force. It was as if all law enforcement shared some rule that any person with enough money to own a limousine was clean and took no thought to the fact that the person in question might have gotten that limousine by dirty deeds. Four of them in a row had also not raised suspicion. German police, well renowned for their diligence and perfectionism had let them pass on that supposed notion.

It was a notion that the wolves were counting on. The Limousines pulled to a stop a block away from the European army base and all of its thirty well dressed passengers climbed out. Some laughing in feigned drunkenness (the women of the group mainly) and others laughing as though they were having a good time. It was probably the last bit of laughter they'd have for awhile they'd supposed on the trip. Their tuxedos and billowing party dresses hid body plates, bandolier pouches with grenades and spare magazines for their AK-108u cut down assault rifles. In the alleyway that they all ducked into in groups of two or three they stripped off their needless party clothes and snapped their weapons together, assembling them in cold and eerie robotic precision. Two of the women who sported the most ridiculous and flowery of the dresses assembled sniper rifles and would act as overwatch. The black suits of Russian Spetsnaz special forces troopers blended them into the night as they all dashed to their positions. The bases motion sensors were disabled first. One of the Spetsnaz troopers had with him a touch laptop and modified cell phone communication card. Powering up the computer he sent his infiltrator disguised as a call to the army base. When the message receiver activated, the trooper jabbed the "7" key overloading the telephones computer systems and allowing the infiltrator program to slip in. It was a simple matter to disable the power at the base after that, European systems, although cocooned with firewalls, were all linked together. Once the walls went down, the entire system was vulnerable. The Spetsnaz wolves were in the base two minutes soon after.

The twenty four Russian commandos split afterwards six man squads to each objective. One group went to the powerstation to ensure it wouldn't reactivate, another went toward the mechanized department where the European vehicles slept. The third and fourth slipped silently toward the base satellite uplink and the armory to destroy those.

The guards were easily dispatched by silenced rifle fire or garrotes. It was a textbook perfect special forces raid that was copied all over Eastern Europe at this time. By 0300, despite the war warnings all the bases had received, sixteen of the twenty special operations had succeeded with one completely failed and the other three unable to make clean getaways. These three were larger formations and tasked with taking full satellite command posts alone. The heavy security coupled with the on site commanders cautiousness in the fact that they were so close to the supposed frontlines had resulted in the troops unable to enter as silently as they hoped and three firefights erupted in Poland that night.


	4. Horizon

0300 – Eastern border of Poland

The entire eastern horizon lit up in a blinding white flare. A sun more magnificent than the one that rose in the east heralded the war that had returned to European soil. Under CINC-WEST's order, the ASAT rockets were launched simultaneously with the fixed artillery batteries and rocket launchers in a massive volley that rivaled the brightness of a nuclear explosion all over the eastern border of the European federation. Two hundred short range ASAT rockets fired from revamped FROG cold war missile launchers lanced straight into the air all across the new front and continued toward the heavens and beyond to strike at the European laser defense satellites that floated above.

European Satellite Command had begun their evasive burns as per orders several hours ago and had angled their weapons toward supposed sights located along the border. A Russian STAR (Satellite Tracking Aeronauta Radar) had for the past three weeks catalogued the exact position of the European satellites that would be closest to the border. Even as their positions adjusted, the STAR kept track and logged twenty such orbital laser platforms along with a dozen or so scanning and GPS satellites which were locked in as well. For two hundred missiles, modified to home in via the STARs signals, it looked to be an easily overwhelming kill.

Upon notification of launch however the European Satellite command, placed at uplink sites across the continent, warmed up their laser generators and unleashed a volley.

Rather poor planning on the Russians part had left some of the FROG missiles grouped up, enabling the massive lasers to vaporize several of the launchers and crewmen just as they had fired. One laser's onboard computer failed to adjust to the rapid change in trajectory via evasive maneuvers and mistracked with favorable results, the laser plowed a trench a half mile wide and three long right in the middle of the 14th Motor Rifle killing a brigade of tanks and self propelled artillery.

The missiles struck ten minutes later, twenty minutes before the satellites finished cooling down for their second shot and evasive Delta V burning. All European satellites in the general area of the eastern front were destroyed, and the remaining missiles were directed by the STAR to seek out targets of opportunity over western Europe. But the satellites there had reoriented and fired, destroying what was left quickly and efficiently.

Below them the artillery bombardment had begun and what little border units there were immediately notified their base and retreated under the roar of falling shells, missiles and the scream of fighter planes that had charged in. Resistance was light, the Europeans had been unable to mobilize troops so quickly, and 0300 was catalogued to be the time when human reaction times were at their worst. It was both sides air forces over Poland where the real opening battles of the war were fought. Polish fighter pilots were quick to respond to the new threat, during war warnings it was normal for all pilots to sleep with their planes and their fighters preloaded with munitions and fueled. Within ten minutes of the first Russian fighters, mainly Su-37 Flanker attack craft, screaming over the border, the Polish planes were already forming up in their old Eurofighter Typhoons. The real Enforcer interceptors were a bit slower off the mark but five minutes later, newer Tyhpoon-Es, equipped with more advanced radar tracking systems and the newest Hailstorm equipped with the first Hydrogen laser to fit on a fighter joined them.

Here the Europeans had a decisive advantage. The Russians, although their fighter planes and pilots were good, were not expecting to see such a determined resistance. Their AWACS type craft were a little slow to follow, the TU-98s converted for such things were one of the few planes in the Russian military that had undergone no such upgrades and was therefore rather weak in this day and age. Also, there were no known countermeasures in the world for TV-aimed lasers. It only took a few of the SAAB-71 Sentinels, which was what the federation used for its AWACs, to illuminate their big bulge air search radars and catalogue the mass of Russian planes vectoring towards them. The Hailstorms then aligned themselves and engaged at a range of over 80 miles. Even at that range laser hits were instantaneous and in the night sky, fires appeared spontaneously from lookers on the ground as Russian planes fell victim to a weapon that they could not counter. The SAAB-71s began jamming enemy radars as well so that the Russians could not shoot back at the fighters. The air war had resulted in horrendous losses on the Russians part, with the European pilots generally scoring an incredible five to one kill death ratio.

The ground war, the war that really mattered was heavily weighted towards the Russians. Although the Type 100 Ogre was not accredited for speed and maneuverability. Modifications which included laser guided missiles and alongside napalm type weapons gave them incredible kill power over the Enforcer's Panther tank most of which were just assembling and were already savaged by heavy artillery and rocket fire, the infantry were no better against them most of them roused out of bunk by officers who barely understood the situation. But they were smart enough to realize it was hopeless to stand and fight so many Enforcer groups withdrew thirty miles to fall back positions where reinforcements would be arriving. Resistance on the ground therefore was light.

By morning the Russians had pushed their front twenty miles.

Things were much different in the Holy Land. 800 attack aircraft lifted off at midnight from all of Israel's air bases, split into five groups and vectored off towards their respective targets where they soon after split into smaller groups and branched off towards their individual strategic targets. The Artemis pilots were in the lead echelon, the spearpoint heading north and east towards Turkey, which was a hostile country with the largest air force and man power. Were the Israeli's sure that it was hostile? Well, if it wasn't before it would be now, Bronco groused. It would be a grueling four hour flight both ways, made possible by the buddy storage tanks his F-35 Lightning had been thoughtfully given. He was maybe about an hour ahead of the main attack force, which would be composed of F-15I Ra'am multirole attack craft, and Jesus there were a lot of those too. Bronco had no clue the IAF had so many fighters.

The IAF had promised an extended contract in addition to a better pay for participant in their war, that would be good for the wife and kids at home. It wasn't as if Winters was heading home anytime soon though, not with the Europeans cutting off the Mediterranean and Africa with their Navy and Air force.

The beeper chimed in Bronco's cockpit.

"All right, Reapers, we have just entered Turkish Air space, keep your radars off and make sure you stay on course. Ten minutes to the checkpoint." And he punched the timer again to reset it. the night sky here was a ghostly green glow courtesy of the IR vision on his HUD.

Too bad they'd be going in with radars off but someone down there might pick up the emissions and what was the point of a stealth fighter if someone could detect you?

There were 16 Reapers flying tonight but what few other F-35s the Israeli's had were performing the same mission across all the groups, first strike against the enemy air defense nets. The timer beeped again.

"Alright here we go." He breathed and switched on the squadron channel. "_Isaac Isaac Isaac_. Execute and good hunting."

And the sixteen fighters paired off and vectored towards their respective targets. The Reapers were loaded up with four five hundred pound cluster bombs and a single sidewinder for air defense. The four Queers had just two Joint Strike Munition missiles for targets of opportunity but there probably wouldn't be any. At the word _Isaac _they switched on their electronic jammers and peeled off individually, flipping their radar tracks on at the same time.

"Got bogeys at three five zero your position lead and heading east." Reaper nine said. "They ain't turning."

Bronco concentrated on his flight pattern, checked the timer again and when it beeped the third time, switched to autopilot and activated his look down camera and laser target designator.

He had to be four thousand meters above the largest air base in Southern Turkey right now, he couldn't remember which but it definitely was a doosie. The IR camera detected lots of heat signatures, meaning a lot of craft warming up _meaning_ that they really were getting ready to fly somewhere, probably Israel.

Good call.

"Got my eyes on them." Reaper two, "Jackass" said. "I'm on target."

"lets give them two passes, one on the hangars, and a second from the North hitting the runway." Bronco decided.

"Sounds good lead."

Bronco depressed the rudder pedal slightly to the right, autopilot only maintained level flying and one could initiate yaw changes any time he wished, and centered the crosshairs on a particularly warm spot that was probably a tanker fueling up. Well the cluster munitions would set that thing up in flames along with a lot of the other planes. He pressed the gel touch screen arming two of his cluster bombs and looked down again, adjusting the crosshairs one last time. At the last second he flipped open the bomb bay doors which would light up the enemy radars because it broke the stealth cross section…

"Bombs free." He said quietely as if the enemy might actually hear him.

"Bombs free." His wingmate seconded and two pairs of clusterbombs sailed to the ground.

Bronco didn't wait to see the explosions, they were high enough up that it would take maybe a full minute for them to hit and by the time they hit he wanted to be already dropping on that runway and bugging out of here. He flipped off the autopilot, retracted the bomb bay doors and made a hard right to bring the fighter on a long turn towards the north end of the runway and leveled out again to repeat the process.

"On target."

"On target."

"Bombs free." His wingmate replied again.

The Israelis had developed wonderful cluster bombs, each single submunition, really a grenade the size of an overly big baseball, was capable of punching through T-95 tank armor and more than enough to kill a grounded fighter. More to the point however, they were "smart". Each submunition had an infared heatseeker and computer that would home in on large heat sources. It only took one of these to kill a tank, and a canister carried twenty of these.

"Woah!" Bronco said as the sky lit up, the sound of the exposion was muffled because of the height but _damn_ it must have sounded a lot worse on the ground.

"Jesus, talk about stir fry!" Jackass replied.

"Bugger out!" Bronco said and hit the afterburners as he prepared to run long and hard south-

"Lead those bandits are heading straight for you now, call them four fast movers. Bearing one nine six at angels thirty three from your position." Reaper 9 called the warning-

Just as he began hearing a warning tone that told Bronco someone was trying to paint him with an air search radar lock, probably wouldn't work but it was good to take precautions.

"Come left jackass." He ordered and swerved hard to bring his fighter out of the search cone.

"Whoo boy looks like you really pissed off the beehive tonight lead." Reaper 9 called again. "count them twenty plus bandits heading straight for you at your six o'clock. F-14Ds it looks like by their heat sigs.

"Pheonix missiles." Jackass warned. The Tomcat's Pheonix missiles could be launched via its powerful TV cameras without radar lock.

A puff of light appeared off of Broncos right wing and suddenly the sky was full of explosions.

"Flak weapons!" he called and instinctively climbed another couple hundred feet to avoid it. "Reaper flight check in."

They all reported no hits then-

"Tallyho, bandits on your six lead, they don't have radar tracks." Reaper 3 added. The Artemis E-2 Hawkeye, a prop aircraft with an AWACS dish, was coming on station now and illuminated its radar and began distributing the information amongst the pilots. Now Bronco's HUD lit up with "bad guy" markers, red boxes, and not all of them were in the air…

"Got a lot of SAMs warming up down there." Reaper nine said.

"Reaper flight, this is Oracle we need you to clear the lanes for the next wave, take out what you can."

Bronco acknowledged, all he really had left was the sidewinder and cannon. He could take out the air assets but that was it. the Queers however, were loaded with Joint strike munitions, heat seeking missiles that could hit ground and air targets. He'd get those on the SAMs. Oracle was taking a big risk with them though, they'd strip the fighters to the bone without so much as a stick to defend themselves.

Bronco ordered the Queers to take out the SAMs directly beneath them and in a ten mile killbox then requested vectors from Oracle to get him behind the Tomcats.

"they're going straight for us Reaper Lead, come right one eight zero and splash me those fighters."

As Bronco turned, he could see the friendly HUD markings of the second wave of fighters. Bronco understood very well, Reaper flight was only sent in to disrupt the Turkish air force long enough for the Israeli's to fly in the holes and make the kill. Unfortunately there _were_ a couple fighters up here that might ruin the IAF's day.

He was only a mile away from his target, twin orange afterburner tracks in the night…

"Good tone, Fox two!" he said and loosed his only missile. The other ten Reapers did likewise sending ten heatseekers into the midst of the enemy formation which immediately broke popped flares and scattered. they evaded very well, the twenty F-14D tomcats broke into two plane elements scanning a specific zone of the air for targets. Only two missiles made hits, which sent two of the Turkish Tomcats spiraling down to the ground. but the Reapers were right behind the missiles and therefore, behind the Turkish pilots. The F-14D was a good plane, Bronco admitted as he sighted the pip up, leading his specific target as it made a radical 6 G turn, but the F-35 definitely outmaneuvered it in tight quarters.

"Guns guns guns!" he called and squeezed off a burst which stitched the fighter diagonally from starboard wing to port afterburner. The Turkish pilots died in a fireball that Bronco dove under and he immediately reversed his right turn into a hard left searching for his next target.

"They're running Reaper lead!" Oracle shouted. "Going back to three six zero good kill good kill!" Bronco steadied off.

"Anyone hit?" he asked.

A chorus of negatives.

"Alright then." He said and activated his running lights as the distance between the second wave of fighters and his own Reapers closed. He could see the faint outlines of A-20 Razorback ground attack fighters in the lead echelon. That would be Captain Michael Sullivan leading Artemis corporations "Rodeo flight". He waggled his wings and saw one of the far off planes waggle them in return before shutting off its running lights as it passed into the combat zone.

Explosions in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Palestine heralded that the Endwar had arrived to the Middle East.


	5. Its not a game anymore

The holodisplay showed that the Russians and their massive force had pushed twenty kilometers in on what had to be a two hundred kilometer front. Blitzkrieg for them, General Bankole smiled smugly, had been completely denied by the fact that A: they had failed to achieve strategic and tactical surprise, and B: they failed to achieve air dominance over the Europeans. He would commend those Polish fighter pilots soon. But now he had a war to lead, and a twenty kilometer push, while insignificant in the short term, was definitely a threat that had to be dealt with and swiftly.

Being a General in this day and age, was so much different from the days of Alexander the Great, where the greats lead armies from the front and engaged in clashes of sword and shield. Now, as Bankole had found out to his great displeasure, it was all about courting politicians and budget/logistics meetings about how much ammunition could be purchased and how quickly such things could reach the front in a short time were the bread and butter of supreme commanders.

Not much was left to him other than the job of sending the needed supplies to the needed area and encouraging his commanders (sometimes rather forcefully) to attack where they needed and to defend where it was appropriate. The order of the day was defense. There was no way his troops could counter attack in their state, commando raids by Russian Spetsnaz troops had disrupted his forward supply and reinforcement bases and there was just not enough strength to stage a decent breakthrough. For the moment, his field commanders would have to satisfy themselves with preparing defenses and spoiling attacks to keep the Russians off balance. Resistance by attacks on Mother Europe's soil would be fierce, he was sure of that. Bankole sighed, the holodisplay probably wouldn't change today, but his schedule with the emergency European Parliament meeting was sure to give him a headache as bad as if the Russians had pushed all the way to Paris. Such was the way of modern warfare, oh to be back in the days of Alexander!

0600 –Warsaw

The Russians were coming and Captain Illych Sopot was a little nervous. The most violent action he had participated in was leading his infantry battalion, part of the 107th mobile infantry corp, against the dissidents that had opposed the formation of the glorious Federation. Rioting was often a bloody thing but new technologies allowed for nonlethal methods which suited Sopot's conscious. The enemy, in Sopot's experience was a large group of disgruntled men and women who were quickly dispersed by a combination of tear gas, tasers, microwaves and sonic weapons. But this wasn't a riot in the streets. This was war on a battlefield and the Russians weren't armed with merely Molotov cocktails and a few illegal rifles or shotguns. They were a top of the line military force backed by some of the best in military hardware. Sopot's infantry were no match for the new Type 100 Ogre and its massive 140 rifled barrel, or the Ka-65 Howler.

On top of this he had many more men under his command than usual. His company consisted of maybe a hundred men, all of them the cream of the crop, Enforcer Kommandos, full time special forces troops who had a wide range of experience varying from riot control in Poland, to Counterterrorism in France and Spain. These were troops whose capabilities he knew. On the other hand, he had been bolstered by an additional four hundred troops which were Federal Defensemen. Basically they were reservists who half remembered their training and were locals. They weren't given the high tech equipment his Kommandos cherished but they were good troops. They were European after all.

What Sopot groused about most was that he didn't...like having all those troops at his disposal. His mind was small and tactical and he knew he could wield his hundred fighting men and women like a surgeon using a scalpel. With five hundred…it was more akin to a barbarian and his lumpen oak club.

At least he wasn't in charge of the whole defense of Warsaw, that was left to the One star, a Frenchman who commanded a Foreign Legion battle group. The roads had been cleared and the terrain was agreeably flat. Good killing ground Sopot theorized. He directed trenches to be dug because they were after all the best infantry defense since WWI. Mines were laid by his engineer specialists and the trenches were dug quickly with the help of local bulldozers and five hundred men. The tanks and infantry fighting vehicles would wait in the city, ready to bolster the defenses wherever they were needed. A few were on the outskirts camouflaged well behind trees and large shrubs.

At 1000 hours, Sopot began to hear engines and tracks in the distance.

"Enemy approaching." He radioed the colonel in charge of the 107th tactical. "I hear tank tracks." A new screeching sound began to rip through the air "And I hear enemy aircraft-"

"Those are ours Sopot." The German responded in his native language. All European troops, for the sake of communications spoke either French or German. Sopot like most everyone was fluent in both. "Air command notified us twenty minutes ago they were scrambling fighters to meet an air attack. We have close air support groups stacking up now Captain. I will keep you notified if I know more."

Colonel Fieldsebruk was a good man who knew to support his troops Sopot noted as he blew dust out of the ammunition magazine of his Belgian made F2000 assault rifle. The soil and dirt had gotten everywhere. The trenches were built enough so that a man standing in one could be completely covered and merely had to climb up to the firing step to expose little more than his head and rifle to engage. They had even dug little niches for where the elbows could be steadied. They weren't looking too much like the trenches of the first world war yet, although the line of resistance was at least five trenches deep and fifty meters of hell between each one, laced with barbed wire and booby traps where they could place them.

Sopot checked his kit one last time, the assault rifle was good. The 4x optical scope offered thermal imaging which would be more of a distraction during the day but could penetrate smoke and grit if needed. He liked the Belgian weapon although many of the others opted for the French made FAMAS or the H&K German G12 bullpup assault rifle (the most advanced rifle in the battalion actually. The German troops naturally got the first pick). The more enterprising even managed to get their hands on Israeli made Tavor – 21s although Sopot had made a point of not asking too closely about that. Israel had been one of the countries that refused Federation proctorate instead relying mainly on defense shipments from the US as it had traditionally done.

His grenades were within easy reach on his belt, right under the fluorine crystal integrated ballistics armor that were supposedly capable of slowing down rifle rounds enough so that they often were not lethal. He left his spare ammunitions on the firing step, if he needed to move, he would need to move fast and he wouldn't be letting six magazines of ammunition slow him.

His Sig Saur sidearm was located in an American made quickdraw holster on his hip (Sopot had always loved cowboy films), and with the final checks finished he slipped the gas mask that was standard on all Enforcer Kommando helmets into place and activated the advanced Heads Up Display. The camera where his forehead was allowed him real time imaging with all of his squad leaders giving him tactical information that had only been dreamed of in the past, and the tiny GPS tracker placed in the helmet linked him and _every_ troop under his command into the battle computer in the Colonel's command vehicle.

Ready.

The air war was an astounding success, achieving both strategic and tactical surprise against all the foreign aggressor nations which, Dolan was pleased to note, had annihilated almost _all_ the enemy air opposition. If they wanted to fight a war with Israel now, they'd do so with their air forces so crippled it'd take Jesus and his miracle works to heal them. The IDF was already mobilizing their reservists. Israel had long lived on the claim that they could come to full readiness in less than _seventy two hours_ and the wisdom of making military service mandatory became clear to Dolan as she walked between the Counterterrorism wing of the Mossad's headquarters to the IDF wing. The streets outside were _brimming_ with men and women actually walking to their respective posts. Many still wore civilian clothing but a few were already in uniform shepherding the reservists to their places. It suddenly hit Dolan that the enemies of Israel might not have truly understood what it meant when an entire country's population would be mobilized for war. Was it every man and woman between the ages of eighteen and sixty? It was something close to it, and she shivered at the thought that a couple of the friends she had made in this country would be_ going to war_.

Dolan checked the notes on her Macbook one last time as she strode briskly to her next meeting. The interrogation of the prisoner had proved so useful and the follow up was so quick she thought that they might have broken the CIA's and the NSA's speed record on electronic footprint following (it turns out they were about three minutes short but God _Damn)_. The information that had been carefully, figuratively and not so figuratively squeezed out of the terrorist (who was grateful to realize he was not blind but not so grateful about the whole captured part) was a bombshell that was waiting for Dolan to drop on the Generals of the IDF and IAF and INF as well as the Director of the Mossad who would then report to Parliament to discuss how to conduct the war and for their current chancellor to either stay in power or be removed as per the "weekly vote of no confidence". The simple wooden doors belied the power of the men that sat in the room before her. The soldier, gave Dolan a stiff nod before opening the door and shutting it after she had entered.

"Special Agent Dolan." The General in charge of Israel's Naval Forces nodded first. His English was commendably good.

"Sirs." Dolan nodded and set her stuff down quickly and attatched the wireless connector to the projector to start up her presentation. "I know we do not have time for pomp so I will get straight to the briefing."

"Is it wise for an American to be susceptible to such information? The General of the IAF looked between his comrades and Dolan with suspicion.

"Miss Dolan has been a commendable ally in our hunt against terrorist elements in the country." The Mossad Director, Avi Ben Jakob, defended. "And it is at her own request that she give the briefing here to lower the chances of security leak."

"Thank you sir." Dolan said and composed herself before clicking the first slide of her Powerpoint presentation. She had applied neutral gray backgrounds to bland black text points and a few charts. She'd worked on this for maybe ten minutes before arriving.

"I would like to start off by reporting an astounding success by the Air Force. They project that an average of three quarters of the oppositions air assets have been completely annihilated, what is left will probably be left strictly for homeland defense." She said and GENIAF, nodded but still glowered at Dolan and her attempt to soften him up. The Israeli's meant business when it came to war.

"Continuing. It would seem that the information we have retrieved from the terrorist "Subject A" is overwhelmingly correct. As we cannot rely on satellites and our own in field intelligence reports have been murky on the subject, the enemies state of readiness as observed by our air assets was in fact at full strength at the time our preemptive strike hit."

"Miss Dolan" GENINF interrupted, "If the countries of Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and Egypt were in fact in a state of war time preparedness against our state, why have they not attacked?"

Dolan remembered it was important to give her honest opinion no matter how stupid it was. She'd learned that in the FBI when such stupid observations turned out to not be that stupid. "My guess is General, that our initial attack caught them off guard about what being _prepared_ for war actually meant. It is only my opinion but your question brings me to the second point."

"the countries we have struck at are now moving their respective land and naval forces very aggressively against the borders of Israel; Syria and Lebanon are fortifying their mobile SAM umbrella as we speak over their troops and Turkey's naval forces will be in weapons range of our local ground attack fighters in three hours. Egypt has begun massing troops along the Suez and appear to be preparing rafting operations for some time in the future."

"And we have not received a formal declaration of war." GENIDF noted. "We have already notified the Jordanians about our plight and they are happy to assist us, at least we have one ally here." He seemed to remember that he was interrupting and waved for Dolan to continue.

"Sirs understand that while I briefly noted the defense situation to you all, It is merely the background context needed for the very fact that my investigation will probably lead me to these hostile countries." Dolan paused to let that sink in before continuing. "As you know, the terrorist cells had been operating via the orders of Lebanon. But our intelligence officers have noted that while the country had backed the PLO for such a time, they recently acted by the directive of _another_ country. If we are to discover the true threat to us, we must discover the country that wants us destroyed."

"We have enough problems as is." The GENIAF groused. "we are already outnumbered by the classic three to one, even with Jordanian help. And sorrily they are not as good as us."

"What do you suggest Miss Dolan?" GENIDF ignored the air force general and looked to the FBI agent.

"What I request is a special operations team be placed under Mossad authority to actively investigate this trail and learn the true threat to our nation. This team must be completely off the record, black in other words. If word leaks out to other countries our trail will vanish or worse come around to backstab us. This team in addition to performing behind enemy lines investigations, must also be prepared to travel to other foreign countries that are not so openly hostile to us to complete their role. This will both provide the Mossad with the means to investigate the true motive for the war and also a means to eliminate those responsible for it." she ended the power point.

"How in field and large would this group need to be?" Avi asked.

"I would say at least six men along with their director who would need to be an experienced field agent. They would also need to look Turkish as that is where the trail begins." She said as she shut down her computer. The smell of coffee burned in her nostrils, which told her that she really really needed some. She'd be getting headaches soon.

"When do you leave?" GENIDF said after conversing quietely with his comrades. Dolan actually took a step back in surprise then smiled and chuckled nervously.

"I don't think I'm the right person for this job sir…"

"We have your file." Avi Ben Jakob nodded. "Two years as training officer for the Bureaus Hostage Rescue Team at Quantico. You can shoot, you've done undercover work in Cuba, you can speak Arabic, Russian, Italian, you have a cool head and you know more than anyone else about this business. You said yourself you worried about the security leak."

"I'm also expendable!" the American Israeli said.

"Succintly put. We'll put your team together Special Agent Dolan." GENIDF stood from his chair. "You come up with a way to get into Syria and begin your work."

Maybe coffee wasn't the type of drink Dolan needed at the moment.


	6. Wolf

Colonel Sasha Timateovich Andreyev let his face wash in the small portable air fan he kept with him. This country was so disagreeably hot, even in the cooled air conditioned climate of the King Spider command vehicle. Andreyev had grown up on a farm in the harsh Siberian wastes. His life had been nothing but struggle, if it wasn't the cold that was trying to kill you, it was the wolves. And the silly earth conservation groups wanted to _save_ these things? In America there weren't any true confirmed wolf killings but out in Siberia oh the wolves had been known (and taped, which was something those conservation groups quietly brushed under the table) to _drag_ farmers out of their homes and tear them apart.

It wasn't merely survival of the fittest out there, it was a war as fierce as the one he was about to fight. He'd learned to fight that one well, he gave his enemy no quarter because surely they would give none to him. His great grandfather had been a sniper in the Great Patriotic War and the Mosin Nagat sniper rifle had been a family heirloom and tool used for wolf hunting.

Andreyev had learned that trade well, using poison, scent lures, the rifle. He'd been hunting wolves since he was eight, barely old enough to lift the gun. At age thirteen on market day where he sold wolf pelts for profit, a recruiter noticed his skill and sponsored him to join the Moscow Military Academy and he'd been a soldier since. He rose quickly amongst the ranks and even caught the notice of the state run SVR intelligence network where they recruited him _again_ to join the special forces. By the time the war kicked off, Andreyev was a Lt. colonel of the 17th Spetsnaz Guard Brigade with a thousand fighting men and women under his command.

The Spetsnaz had grown into something…fiercer in the past twenty years, just as Andreyev was growing up as a matter of fact. For one thing, he not only commanded commando units, he had tanks and helicopters and artillery to direct which were far different from directing merely infantry.

Tanks were the doctrine of all Russian styles of warfare ever since the Great Patriotic War and Andreyev could see the value in grand armored charges supported by swarms of aircraft and curtains of artillery fire. Here at Warsaw, there would be little difference.

The terrain was flat and from what his forward recon elements could see, the enemy had trenches and camouflaged heavy guns. He'd have to use his artillery to cover his tank advance which in turn would cover his infantry and the GRU regulars that would be intermingled in his force (the GRU commander had respectfully submitted to Andreyev's tactical command) would help shield his own Spetsnaz troops.

Like most Spetsnaz group commanders, Andreyev held disdain for the efficiency of the regular GRU, even if they were class A and therefore the top of the line. Their technology lagged at least a decades behind the Spetsnaz although there was an agreeable amount of T-100s and KA-65s in the helicopter and armored regiments which were usually made up of just T-95s and Mi-28s.

What all of these units, old, new, infantry and armor had in common was that they all had an IFF tag which was copied from the American Blue Force Tracker. This was linked up to the flat tactical display that lay in front of Andreyev like a chess board.

Andreyev closed his eyes and took a deep breath.

"Enemy air activity is fierce sir." The tactical air officer reported. "Our fighters are having many problems reaching the front, air support will be limited."

"route enemy air positions here Comrade Lieutenant." Andreyev said and flipped the display to show the tactical air view. From the gridded cross sections. Andreyev could see that his support groups were being engaged twenty miles behind the front, too far away for them to actually help him. The enemy aircraft would be in range of his AA soon.

"Keep your SAM's offline until I give the word." Andreyev ordered the captain in charge of air defense as he switched back to the ground view. The battlefield beckoned him and the enemy invitingly lay in trenches, a stationary position that was primitive and horribly out of date to hold against a massive wave assault like this. "What's the wind speed and direction?"

"Wind's blowing east at low speed sir."

The wind was at his back, and the sails of his army would billow in them. He made his opening decision and opened a channel to his Zhukov self propelled howitzers.

"Fire coordinates map grid five seven seven five to five seven nine six. Fire package blue."

There was a distinctive sound in the air now, like an amplified tearing of fabric only the fabric was the air and the thing tearing it was-

The first shell burst a hundred meters away, kicking up dirt and raising a very distinctive orange cloud-

"Chemical shelling!" Captain Sopot shouted and immediately clipped the breathing mask and goggles on. the first shell had been a gimmick Sopot realized soon after, as that one had hit the ground. The majority of the others burst into the air the better to disperse their gas amongst the troops. The Russians would use such horrible weapons against them! They would pay, Sopot promised, his veteran commandos had their gas masks already in place but a few of the reservists were much slower off the mark, fumbling in barely rehearsed rote as the black masks were slipped on. they hampered breathing and vision drastically, his only comfort was that the Russians would be the ones on the short end of this stick, death would be coming from all around them where as Sopot only had to direct his fire in one direction. Such was the poor tactics of the Russians.

The trees parted then gave way to a short line of T-100 ogres, heavy tanks with special blades attatched on the front hull so they could rip trees from their roots and charge forward with as little effort as driving over an anthill.

The orange gas descended amongst the trenches, obscuring Sopot's first view of the enemy slightly before the advanced visor kicked in and outlined the enemy for him. There weren't that many attacking his line, only four Ogres? Did they really think them that weak? Well his missile launchers would make them deeply regret that mistake…

Andreyev watched his forward tanks reach firing range, he paid particular attention to the Major in charge of Mastadon squadron who would be the first person to ever implement this sort of tactic. He had thirty tanks attacking a six mile wide line that had already been prepared by his chemical shelling. If the Europeans realized how much danger they were actually in they weren't reacting which meant they really _didn't_ understand.

"Signal weapons hot to all units." He ordered.

Sopot ducked down below the trenches and into the "rabbit hole" dugout that was serving as a land line communications trench.

"That is not a chlorine or mustard gas." Sopot's colonel noted with quite some alarm in his voice, "we are not yet sure of the make up of it but we can confirm it is not a standard chemical agent."

"Could it be a bioweapon?" Sopot asked with some nervousness, what were the Russians playing at?

"Unsure, it is possible-"

Sopot was engulfed in flame.

The hydrogen gas shelling wasn't a new technology in the Russian arsenal, in fact it had been theorized in the 1960s and was only recently introduced when a newer less reactive element had been mixed with the hydrogen so that it would only ignite when in direct contact with flame.

Andreyev's Zhukov artillery weapons had launched a two punch salvo of both ground and air dispersal shells, that had the desired effect of engulfing all three forward and rear infantry trenches and on Mastadon's command had fired their napalm "bumblebee" weapons in a short burst. The result was instantaneous.

A wildfire ripped through the trenches and what troops weren't immediately burned were found deprived of oxygen. The flames burned hottest and longest in the trenches, where the gas had been allowed to settle and where the majority of the European infantry were at. A few individual squads managed to climb out of the flames, these were usually the special warfare troops who were given more advanced armor although they were being roasted alive in them. The least amount of casualties would be located in the rear, while their front ranks would be absolutely annihilated. He ordered the rest of his armored groups forward in a reserved attack, while he waited for the European counter attack which he would be prepared for. Andreyev was the wolf here, and these Europeans were not experienced hunters as he was.

Sopot tried to block out the screams of men and women being cooked alive. He'd never heard such a horrible sound, wailing and screaming mixed with the roar of a fire that had found roosts on the skins of his fine troops or even the very ground on which he walked. He climbed out of the trench as did some of the smarter ones. God even the _air_ was on fire, everything was a roaring sheet of flame, left right up down forward backward he was trapped in a dome of fire. He saw a couple of his men get up and run to where the second line of trenches were and therefore the rear but suddenly they stumbled and fell twitching on the ground. He turned and saw the hulking form of a T-95 tank, its hull smoking and its 7.62mm machine gun flashing as it turned on more of his troops who had managed to survive the first wave of the attack.

The first wave? It hadn't even _finished_ and with that horrifying thought Sopot sprinted all the way back to his trenches trying and failing to not stare at the ground and at all the men and women who had died to nature's most terrible element.

The colonel of the 107th immediately saw the danger and in a very alarmed voice (those were _his _men being massacred out there!) ordered a blanket artillery fire on that position and immediate close air support on the enemy artillery.

European air command responded quickly and efficiently, the Hailstorms had already been stacked up and on call, with the AWACS on station immediately tagging the enemy artillery which would be hit with cluster bombs and at very high speed. The fire controller on board sent the hailstorms in from the north, where they would deal the most damage in a single pass. Cheetah's and Gazelle gunships raced forward to cover the infantry retreat as Enforcer tanks began to engage at maximum range against the juggernaut T-100s and T-95s.

Enforcer Marksman self propelled guns raised their heavy cannon to the fire mission azimuths locked their rods into the ground to brace them for the fire and unleashed their payloads, heavy rounds and air burst rounds that would shower on the armored charge and hopefully stop it in its tracks…

The Russians had a mobile fire finder radar on one of the heavy tracks and immediately noted the position of the enemy artillery which was located in the suburb section of Warsaw. The Russian fire finder was powerful, and able to track each individual shell's trajectory back to its source. The mobile air radar also detected close air support in the form of fighter bombers and gunships that would come in from the north and the west respectively.

Andreyev ordered his SAM's to illuminate now while he brought his anti air flak weapons forward to engage the helicopters. To his reserve artillery groups (because he hadn't used all of them in the initial volley, he designated the enemy artillery coordinates and simply ordered his own long guns to "flatten them".

The casualty reports began streaming in.

The roar of heavy artillery raining down not three hundred meters from Sopot's position was enough to make him almost collapse and weep. He and most of his Kommandos had barely made it out alive, the environmental conditioning equipment his troops wore turned out to be lifesaving in a wildfire and their relief was evident even though they were still in the fight. Some of his men he'd found out had died because the heat was so much they cooked off their grenades and ammunition. When Sopot looked down, he noticed a few of his own bandoliers had ruptured and had only been stopped by the protection plates that covered all of his vital points.

It was as eye opening as the wall of flame that licked and flickered before him. He could see the Enforcer Panther tank fire another shot and wondered how in the world could they target anything with _death_ staring right at them in the face and consuming so many of their comrades.

"Can we not do anything?" an Italian lieutenant asked. "Anything at all to help our brothers?" his voice cracked, he was so young.

"Against tanks and artillery, we have nothing." Sopot managed to find his voice though each one was stuck against his throat. Out of his hundred, most had survived but there were sixteen who had not and those losses were light in comparison to the Reservists. "our missiles would be cooked in such a heat and explode before they reached the target." Before Sopot could say anything more the emergency command override cut into his channel.

"_Guardian Guardian Guardian"_ the code phrase made Sopot want to weep with shame and relief at the same time.

It was the order for full retreat, Sopot lifted his rifle and leaped onto the hull of a rapidly backtracking Panther, its main gun blazed one last time before taking cover behind the corner of a building. A battle had been fought today, and everyone knew who the winners and losers were.

The contact was made via email, a dead drop one off of Yahoo! And a meeting was arranged here in Tel Aviv. The contact had responded quickly, and here she was, only a day after making that contact (Dolan had sent the email before she had even gotten permission to form the team) he was here. Or at least he was supposed to be.

Dolan sat in her favorite little café, where usually the coffee was good, the service was nice and the atmosphere friendlier than back in the states. Now, there were so few of the young people that helped make this atmosphere cheery that it seemed almost abandoned. The only ones around were still in secondary school and weren't usually allowed off campus for lunch breaks. Dolan sipped her ice coffee and waited, she faced the doorway while she read the daily newspaper. There was a little pinhole that she could peer through from time to time so that she could see who entered the door, it was an old spy trick.

The pinhole was blotted out and she heard the scuff of a chair on tile.

"Patricia?" the sixty-ish and oddly fit man asked, he had grey hair that was cut short like American lawns and the aviator glasses hid the eyes that she suspected were blue.

"Yes?" she said as she peered around the newspaper and accepted the stretched hand.

"John Clark. Good to meet you." The man shook her hand, it was very strong and rugged, hands that had obviously been places and performed work. Clark, that was a familiar name to Dolan, this was her contact but for security reasons they had not disclosed each others names. The fact that he had managed to deduce her first name showed the skill of this operator.

"Clark? Where have I heard that name before?"

"I used to be Agency, and did very hush hush jobs." Clark said and peered over his glasses. So he _still_ was Agency and _still _doing black operations. "Your contacts must be very good to have me dragged all the way here."

"Gus Werner pointed you out." Dolan was on very good terms with the Director of Intelligence (Operations) in the CIA.

"Good man, young but smart head on his shoulders." Clark nodded. "But anyway your message intrigued me, what can you do me for?"

"You understand that everything I disclose here is confidential?" Dolan asked in a low voice. Clark sniffed as if slightly insulted.

"Of course."

"I need to assemble a special operations team that can infiltrate Turkey, I need three men who know the area and people, access to safehouses, equipment, weapons, the lot."

"I know the area, safe houses not so much but let me make a couple calls and see who I can fetch." Clark nodded. "Have you thought out the logistics of the operations though?"

"How do you mean?"

"It takes more than just good observation to work up international intel." Clark said and shook his head. "You used to be an HRT analyst right? That's counterterrorism, great field to work in, a lot less complicated than real intelligence work. But anyway what I understand, from what you _haven't_ told me but a couple of my sources have is that your planning an operation that could possibly lead to the assassination of one or more higher echelon people in Turkey and all these hostile countries. That's really dirty stuff, and the type of surveillance you need to plan that sort of operation is really tech heavy, stuff you're probably not familiar with. That means hard and softwiring equipment, bead radios, low band encryptions, pincameras, bugging equipment, recon drones, and of course the stuff that goes boom if you need it." Clark finished quietely. Dolan was very impressed, now this was a _pro_.

"yeah I'm new." Dolan shook her head and allowed herself to spill that one for Clark. "But its what needs to be done, and you're here to advise me right? You want in too?"

"Why else would I be here?" Clark nodded matter of factly. "I've got a lot more field experience than most of the officers at agency have combined. And trust me, as good as your Israeli guys are, they're going to be lost in Turkey and such a small team probably doesn't have the range of abilities and equipment needed to perform a deep strike operation as quickly and effectively as you think. I can get you the equipment, latest from the agency in fact and I can ring up a couple of my buddies and see what we can do from there."

"Alright." Dolan nodded. "You seem to know a lot about the job."

"I have a lot of years under my belt." Clark said and sipped his iced coffee as it arrived. "And don't worry, I know where you stand, I used to head a counterterror team back in the day before I retired from that."

"Which one?" Dolan cocked her head.

"Rainbow." Clark sipped his drink nonchalantly. "I was Rainbow Six."


	7. condition alpha

The evacuation of Poland had choked up the roads a lot. Luckily, the Gadfly transport choppers were up to the task of rapidly mobilizing the Enforcer mechanized divisions. Russian ground tactics relied on shock and awe, and their war machines were shocking and awe inspiring indeed. Bankole's troops were sustaining heavy losses without so much as scratching the enemy. If anything, he had complete night time air superiority and his Hailstorms were wreaking all nine hells across the eastern European country side. But the day and ground belonged to the Russians and they were pushing his forward troops back daily. Warsaw had been overrun and the Russian's attack momentum didn't seem to be slowing. Soon they'd be into Germany (at the rate of their advance, it could take a week!) and then there would be no stopping them from taking Paris.

There would be a major engagement that would take place at the town of Hannsburg on the Poland/Germany border. The eight roads and two train depots along with a valuable satellite uplink station rested at that vital town. Bankole was moving the 103rd mechanized, and the 107th mechanized to that position along with ordering the retreating troops to fall back and lay there where they deserved a short breather before getting thrown back into the fray. His troops would reach that town in three days.

The Russians would reach it in two.

Dolan didn't understand the term "Rainbow six" at first. She'd heard of the Rainbow counterterror team of course, everyone in every special agency was required to know of the NATO counter terrorist force. The term "Six" she had learned after asking one of her men, David Peled, about it (he'd also been a part of Rainbow) was because of the British derivative of the name. Directors of their agency divisions were known as "Sixes" while the subcommanders were known as "fives." Therefore, "Rainbow Six" which was based in Hereford (also home of the 22nd SAS regiment) meant that this John Clark was the one who had fucking _started_ the group. Hot damn! Just how old was he?

"Rainbow six?" David Peled nodded. "It'll be good to see him again."

"He's bringing a couple of the old guys too. You heard of Homer Johnston, JC Chavez and Oso Vega?"

"Sniper, shooter and big guy, yeah they were part of it back when I was in." David Peled grinned. "Good to get the old firm back together. Chavez is Six's grandson if anyone was wondering."

"What's so important about it?" a younger man in his twenties asked, he was Benjamin Zil'Zilich, part of the IDF team under Dolan's command. He was part of the Mossad's foreign black operations force, and therefore a special man out of a community of special men. However, Dolan noted that he was hotheaded and hadn't actually had a single operation under his belt. But he spoke English as fluently as if he was born in Times Square. "So they can shoot, but they're old men. won't be too hard to compete with them will it?"

"We're on the same side." The third member of the team shook his head, he was Daniel Stuart an Israeli jew of American heritage. "Its no competition."

Zilich shook his head and returned to cleaning his MicroTAR-21. The latest and greatest in Israeli special forces weaponry was the pride and joy of this small IDF team. They waited in the barrack ready room of Tel Aviv's gym where they had completed the shooting excercise for the day, Dolan had insisted that she tag along and while she was out of shape compared to the men who ran 6 mile morning PTs and performed a hundred press ups without breaking a sweat, she was satisfied that her shooting hadn't faltered since her time with HRT at Quantico. The Rainbow men arrived on time at 0900.

They were all in their 40s except for Clark (who Peled had disclosed was aged in his goddamn _seventies_ and still in good business) and Chavez who was only in his early twenties, good to see someone so young. And they all looked just as fit as the Israeli team. Zilich visibly gawked at the sight of the giant Oso.

"Do you eat _barbells?"_ Zilich managed in fair English. Oso laughed and replied in the same language.

"Naw, I was raised by bears." Vega joked.

"Peled, its good to see you again." Clark shook his former comrade's hand and introductions mixed with reunions for a few moments.

"How you guys holding up?" Peled turned to his former comrades.

"Its been nice, Werner picked us up for HRT." Johnston shrugged.

"You'll really like what we have here." Peled eagerly began displaying his equipment to the Rainbow men. "We've got the IDF future force Tac helmets with real time HUD and imaging equipment, it links right up to our snake cameras too, great for peeking around the corners. High yield thermal upgrades on the tactical goggles, " He displayed the helmets that looked quite a bit like helicopter pilot helmets except there were a pair of IR goggles that had been attatched to it, "powerful enough to penetrate a foot of concrete. Corner shot attatchments for all our gear, pistols and rifles, RC drones, latest Semtex plastics, Heartbeat sensors and disruptors-"

"The disruptor?" Clark shook his head, "Never heard of that one before."

"Newest toy from ICOM industries." Patricia Dolan explained with quite some smugness, the United States had always been known for its high tech stuff but sometimes the world could still catch them off guard. "Its still in its experimental beta, but they managed to release a few for us. You understand how the heartbeat sensor works?"

"Just about." Clark nodded. "Something about being able to detect the electromagnetic field around a human heart. I remember when Peled dropped _that_ bomb on us."

"Right, and the human field is unique, which is why it doesn't get confused with the patterns of animals and such. Well, the disruptor," she held up the sheet up, it was no larger than the size of her palm, and had a peel off side so it could stick to objects. "Is something that emits another small field. And the idea behind it is that because the two fields are in such close proximity, they overlap so the sensor will become confused and cancel it out as something that isn't human."

"Isn't that sort of a wave that close to your heart dangerous?" Price asked suspiciously.

"There's been some discussion about it physically disrupting the pattern of your heart beat," Dolan admitted "But from all the testing that's been done it isn't likely although if anyone here has heart problems I wouldn't recommend putting it on."

"And a sensor actually can detect you at close range." Peled went on. He'd been part of the first team to use it back when it had first been given to Rainbow so he'd been one of the people that had been chosen to test the disruptor. "At a range of about seven meters or so, standard systems are able to separate the two so we shouldn't get too reliant on it."

It wasn't hard for many modern countries to acquire things for their special forces or counter insurgency teams. Whether they would actually encounter one during this operation would be up to providence.

"But continuing, we have the sensors, disruptors, phone taps, firewall penetrators, newest DKL 400 bit radios and that basically covers it."

"We brought a couple toys from the Agency that I felt you guys might be liking." Clark said and gestured for Homer Johnston to shuck his bag and display its contents on the table. "I'm good friends with a guy at the NSA, and he's been generous enough to lend us some of these." First he held up thin stylus object. "EMP disruptor, tap it on something and it will either short circuit immediately or for the more study stuff, it'll disable it for about two to four minutes give or take. We've also got a more powerful one in grenade form."

He pulled out something that looked like infrared NVGs but the optics looked more streamlined and also bulkier at the same time. "Sonar goggles, three dimensional imaging via high acoustic tones. Like a sub."

"_How?"_ Peled managed, Clark smiled and gave a shrug to show that he wasn't saying anything about that.

"Nice to know we still have some of the best toys." Chavez smiled. "How are we getting into Turkey?"

"Well Turkey's shut down its air ports so we can't take that route, it'll have to be by sea…"

INC Hamas steamed out at twenty knots. The latest in the Israeli fleet had the armament of a few destroyers and frigates in other fleets. INC Hamas was a corvette and one of the few ships in the modern world left to engage directly in ship to ship threats. Captain Jared Gregorich kept his eyes on the radar screen quite literally the lifeblood of this tiny 200 meter ship. He was operating in the northern sector of the Mediterranean, dealing with the Turkish fleet which was just as modern and twice as large. Their submarine force outnumbered Israel's and in the past, Turkey had been a rather good neighbor performing joint excercises and war games with the Israeli Naval Force but now they were not friends, it was no longer a game for Gregorich and the crew of Hamas. He'd heard rumors of a war about to be kicked off, well that's why Gregorich had decided to go career. He wanted to fight a war.

The Radio officer's hot printer spat a message out which he read before handing it to Gregorich.

TO: ACTUALINC-56

FROM:SURFNAVINT

ALL INF VESSELS ARE NOW TO CONDUCT UNRESTRICTED WARFARE IN TURKISH AND EGYPTION WATERS. THIS IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD AS A GENERAL WEAPONS FREE ON ALL RPT ALL SURFACE AND SUBSURFACE FOREIGN VESSELS

-INC 56 - TWENTY PLUS SURFACE VESSELS ON INTERCEPT WITH LIGHT AIR COVER, NO REPORTS OF SUBSURFACE VESSELS.

Gregorich scanned the second part twice and nodded to his XO, Lieutenant Jamal who then pressed a key on the general control board which sent an alarm throughout the ship which would send his crewmen scrambling to their ready posts. Jama lifted up the intercom "Set condition bravo throughout the ship."

INC Hamas was now at war, and standard procedure would be to immediately illuminate the powerful search radar to full.

"Surface contacts sir," the Electronics warfare officer said "Bearing three three two karem two hundred, call 'em patrol boats."

"Sir, I've got a radio hail on an open channel, its in English sir." The radioman said. "Says for us to turn around and leave restricted Turkish waters."

Gregorich shot Jama a cool glance, which Jama answered by pointing at the charts.

"We're well within our waters sir."

"Condition Alpha." Gregorich said and set his hands at the small of his back. "Come right three two three, unmask all weapons."

"Condition alpha is now in effect." Jama said over the intercom, now Hamas was ready for combat. "All decks are standing by sir." There weren't many naval movies out there anymore, Americans just seemed to forget how important the seas were, and maybe the waters weren't flashy enough for them to make movies about it.

"EWO," Gregorich said and raised his binoculars to the coordinate- he could see grey outlines of what were probably little patrol boats escorting a Corvette. That would be the main threat, the patrol boats would be wasps and usually unmanned. Drone technology had increased exponentially since their first use in 2004. "I want you to start on their control frequencies and work your way from there. Give 'em a full octave."

"Aye aye sir, full octave." The Electronics Warfare Officer said and began rapidly punching his keys. This was a man that had ever increasing responsibility placed on him as time went on. When he wasn't jamming enemy long range radios or overloading their powerboards, he would be cyberfighting, defending the INC Hamas against electronic attack as well as executing his own. "Full octave" meant that he would be sending an eight tone jamming against the enemy ship which could probably defend against it, but was not so inclined to launch its own attacks and that was what Gregorich was counting on while he concentrated on standard tactics. The eight tone jamming would have the added affect of knocking out its long range radio, short wave radar, whatever GPS navigation it had and maybe even the drone control network.

Another thing was that, supposing Gregorich was wrong and he actually _was_ in Turkish waters, the full octave would buy him time enough to slink back to Israeli sea. Of course, his charts couldn't be _that_ off course, otherwise he'd have run his ship aground a long time ago. And electronics warfare couldn't even be considered war shots and had almost the same affect as firing a couple five inch rounds across a ships bow.

Through the binoculars, Gregorich could see that the enemy ship was turning- a flash of smoke and gout of flame rose from the ship.

"Vampire vampire!" the Radar officer shouted. "Incoming missile designate threat axis three three two – we got another one, multiple vampires, four sir!"

"Left full rudder, all ahead flank. Come to new course two seven zero, ready countermeasures, your weapons are free."

The starboard 40 mm began its cycle, firing a round every three seconds at a low azumith. The incoming missiles were Gladius type sea-skimmers which would come in low, a good six meters above the waves and punch through the hull of his ship as if it were made of glass. Its warhead brain though, was developed in the late 1980s and therefore extremely primitive and susceptible to all kinds of attacks such as Foil chaff, jamming, or even outright control by the crew of Hamas.

"Splash one, splash two." The radar intercept officer shouted.

"One jammed." The EWO shouted from his station, his fingers flew over the keys as if possessed.

"Firing solution!" the Principal Weapons Officer (PWO) called. "Battery A and guns have a firing solution."

"Set to salvo fire and shoot." The Israeli captain snapped.

"Birds away, time on target, sixty seconds." The PWO snapped a stopwatch up and counted down. Asp missiles were a copy of the Gladiators the Turkish forces used but had been upgraded over the years giving a decent chip for its brain. The missiles were set to different randomized evasive vectors which would make it so much harder for counter batteries to gain good locks on them. Salvo firing ran the risk of those missiles slamming into each other but it again would be hard for the counterbattery to prioritize. He would overwhelm it with fire, and eight missiles probably might be enough.

"I want full safeties on the torpedo tubes." Gregorich wiped the sweat off his brow. What modern warfare lacked in humanity surely made up for it in intensity. "give me a firing solution."

"Twenty seconds." The PWO said. The radar officer shouted something but it was drowned out as the counterbattery officer fired off a countermeasure, a booster R-BOC canister rocketed into the air and foil chaff blossomed out of it, attempting to confuse the warhead. The Turkish Gladiator saw the foil bloom overhead of its target and saw the fuzzy outlines merge into one massive target. The warhead's brain scrambled and immediately self destructed. Fragments pinged onto the bridge, the shockwave of the explosion shuddered the viewports.

The Turkish ship was not so lucky, its own countermeasures rocketed high into the air and exploded the same, but the Israeli missiles could see two very distinct pictures and distinguished that one was a surface target, and one floated in the air and was therefore not the target. Two missiles struck the fore and aft sections of the Turkish corvette and remaining missiles distributed themselves amongst the patrol ships.

They obviously weren't drone controlled, the remaining pair of patrol boats turned and sped away at flank, too fast for even a nimble corvette to give chase.

"Well done." Gregorich said and smoothed his hair. He allowed himself a grin. "Stand down to condition Bravo, good first battle."


	8. NORAD

Cheyenne Mountain, United States of America -2100

CINC-NORAD walked into the Ops center to perform his twice daily check, once in the morning, once in the evening. He was one of the few men in the United States military to ever hold the rank of Full General, he was a four star of the United States Air Force. He had never been a fighter jock, rather he'd been a deskie, he'd concerned himself with the movements of those who'd fly above the sky. Space was where the next war would be fought, and CINC NORAD had learned that tradecraft well.

He'd earned himself a PH.D in Physics and had placed top of his class at Colorado Springs in Calculus. He'd worked his way up to the rank of General as a satellite analyst and controller even as what was considered a "fourth rate citizen" in the Air Force's business. This fourth rate citizen held more power in a twitch of his fingers than most generals had with a full swing of their attack force. He commanded all of the United State's orbitial kinetic weapons platforms, they'd never been used against live targets yet, only test missiles fired on easy intercepts.

Theoretically, the "Rods from God" could be used with the force of a nuclear strike with none of the residual radiation but that wasn't their primary role. Here under Cheyenne CINC NORAD was charged with the defense of the United States and the responsibility weighed on his shoulders each time he stepped into the center.

"Alls right with the world?" He ended every day with the usual quip.

"Nothings right with the world!" the standard response came from all in the center. It was like that a lot now, NORAD used to control everything on the globe, able to spy on other countries detect thermal blooms of rockets from overhead even use its powerful infrared imaging equipment to watch couples do it in Paris (not the best quality he had to admit). But ever since the outbreak of the war and the frantic satellite war that had taken place, the United States had withdrew its kinetic weapons platforms, thermal and GPS sats to keep them for defense.

"Carry on!" CINC NORAD and left the Ops center. It would be the same every day, no one would attack America, and no one would certainly launch anymore nuclear missiles.

The Golan Heights – 0800

The Air commander of the Israeli E-7 AWACS "Avatar" strode over to the rear of the aircraft's own OpCenter, where a technician raised her hand.

"We have hostile movement on the heights sir, looks like three full tank regiments."

"And enough artillery to flatten everything from here to Jerusalem." The commander noted as he took a check at the radar screen, Avatar flew with its look down radar active at all times during war warnings. He cleared his voice and activated the ship's intercom so he could speak with the entire sixty man crew.

"Get the word out everyone,: enemy on the heights – " he took a look as another crewman gestured to his screen, he was the air threat director.

"and incoming air raid."

"_Attention all callsigns this is a stage one alert, say again this is a stage one alert, incoming air raid at three six zero, you are cleared to intercept, repeat you are cleared to intercept."_

"Its about goddamn time." Bronco groused. One of the more unfashionable parts of being an airman was that the stick time was often boring, that's why Bronco had signed up for Artemis in the first place, they seemed more likely to get more action. Of course, now he was stuck on the other side of the globe fighting for a country that wasn't his but his passion was in the stick.

"Reaper flight," Avatar was on station another AWACS craft "Gemini" moving to add its big bulge radar to cover the battle front "multiple bandits are three six zero angels thirty count them thirty two plus. I make them Sierra Uniform two sevens. Continue on base heading, you are weapons free. Say again, weapons are free."

"Copy weapons free." Bronco replied and continued on his northward heading. "Reaper flight check."

"Two." "Three." "Four." It was a BARCAP flight, only four pilots were aloft for now, and against thirty two enemy fighters. It'd be hard work up here, Bronco reflected.

"We'll start the attack fox one." The F-35Cs for their Combat Air Patrol were loaded out with full air superiority packages, AIM-10 Quarrels, new SLAMRAAM missiles that had been bolted on by Israeli ground geeks and Sidewinder heat seekers. They'd have to engage at the furthest possible range and the SLAMRAAM could shoot at 80 miles, just twenty miles short of the phenomenal pheonix's theoretical range. The Artemis pilots would be quite alone up here for a bit, until the other fighters could scramble anyway. The General in charge of the Israeli Air Force had been wise enough to let the Artemis fighters stick together instead of spreading both the squadrons out like a couple of Bronco's previous employers.

The AWACS craft began their battle links as they began tracking both ground and air units on both sides and the advanced Heads Up Display showed Bronco everything on the battlefield before he could even see it. He counted what had to be at least two dozen enemy fighters at four thousand meters a hundred miles away, they were angling towards Oracle who was escorted by a pair of Israeli F-15s.

"Good lock!" the calls rang out from the only four warplanes aloft.

"Fox one: Slammer!" Bronco hit the pickle trigger and physically felt his fighter judder as the weight of the heavy missile fell from the frame and boosted off reaching Mach 1 five hundred meters away from its launch.

He readied his second SLAMRAAM and fired that as well. At the edge of its range, SLAMRAAM missiles burned all their fuel and continued on kinetic energy alone (and that was quite a bit because the missiles could obtain speeds of Mach 5 at sixty miles of continuous flight). It had been an original design flaw that had proven so useful the United States and now the Israelis had purchased thousands of them for air superiority roles. The flaw of burning through fuel too quickly meant that there was no smoke trail to alert a pilot that there was an incoming threat and they therefore would not evade.

If there was anything that could be called a "Stealth missile" it probably would have been this one. The HUD lock was a program built into both the HUD and the missile that was merely a projection of where the missile would hit. The missile itself was radar guided and at a projected range, in this case, twenty miles from its target, it activated its miniscule air search radar and homed in on the return radiation signals.

The result was calmness in the enemy ranks, they were Lebanese SU-37 Superflankers, which became panic when four fighters were suddenly blotted out of the sky followed by another quartet. The enemy fighters separated furiously searching for targets but finding none.

"Flight, Lead, take it up another 2K meters and we'll hit their brains."

"Two." "Three." "Four."

Bronco punched the ejector racks to separate the SLAMRAAMs from his fighter to make it stealthy again and hauled the stick in a sharp climb. They cruised for another ten minutes, the enemy search radars wouldn't be able to detect him and his flight certainly.

"Tallyho," Jackass said "Make it an India Lima Niner Zero." It was an export Russian model, with not much in the way of defending itself even in countermeasures. It was properller driven like the Artemis E-2 Hawkeye but probably lacked the sophistication the Artemis crews had upgraded the craft with.

"Take it out two, we'll run cover."

"Roge." A moment later. "That's a kill."

"Reaper flight, Oracle, we've got Rodeo coming in one eight seven from your position, take them in, they've got tanks to kill." Bronco turned around to let the fighters below him mill in confusion. Reaper had done its work.

Sopot really loved the Air Force, even if they were arrogant stuck up and generally richer than everyone else. His trip to Hansburg was anything but uneventful. Russian Su-47S Slamhounds were stealth fighters almost as good (they had a radar cross section of a flock of geese at high altitude) than the American F-22 Raptor, and were very easily penetrating European air space. Worse, they were ground attack craft like the American A-20 Razorback (for some reason Europe had never built a completely dedicated ground attack fighter) and continued to use the fire attacks against the retreating Enforcer groups with devastating effect.

The marksman howitzers were always the first targeted and the hardest hit by Russian fighters, whoever had thought the days of when fighters would strafe ground units with cannon was over clearly was wrong. A 20mm cannon round from Messchersmitt 109s in WWII could devastate tanks, and so could the Fuel Air Bombs dropped by Russian fighters along with their 30mm cannon.

But it all would have been worse without the air force, Ka-65 gunships and Mi-56 armed troop transports had been hunting them, trying to swat down a lagging Badger or Panther and many times they would succeed. But when the Hailstorms appeared every single damn helicopter squadron would flash instantly and explode.

Most of the troops, usually Federal reservists, liked the comfort of the insides of the Badger IFV but now almost all of them preferred to ride on top of the hulls, the better to leap off the sides of one and off the road if a Slamhound decided to make its pass along the column. Sopot had already seen that happen once.

WILKOMMEN the sign to Hansburg displayed in German, even though Sopot technically thought of it as a Polish town. The town didn't look very welcoming, there were too many people around, they had fled the oncoming Russians and this town as a hub in a giant wheel was a place of refuge they all gravitated toward. It would be hard living here for awhile, the Colonel had let it be known that they would have one day to rest while the local Federal troops would prepare the defenses, the Russians would be on them the next day.

Sopot, however couldn't just sit there and rest, not with the threat of Russians just _looming_ over him every waking moment, otherwise the fire might consume him again. He came down to the front where the captain in charge was directing the digging of trenches.

"no that won't do." Sopot shook his head and spoke very angrily in his best German. "It simply doesn't work."

"Trenches are the best infantry fortification." The captain countered "There is no substitute for a good trench."

"the trenches are the reason why there are so few of us _here_ you shit!" Sopot snarled and wondered why he was so angry, then understood why and spoke his mind. "Have you ever seen trench full of men ignite because there is no room for them to climb out of one? It is a stupid and primitive fortification!"

"What would you have me do?" The reservist captain gestured angrily at his troops. "Sandbag fortifications are far too flimsy to halt an armored charge and you are quite terrified of a ditch!"

Sopot didn't have an answer to that and stomped off, maybe he'd find a pub in this town and drown himself in it. The flames followed him.


	9. Legionairre

Oddly, it was easy enough to get into Turkey. The wartime laws in that country were not as strict and most hadn't even been enforced so far, as probably their media hadn't let it on that there was a full swing war yet. A refugee flight was conducted by the Israeli government to deport citizens who were not Israeli back to their homes and quite a few of those homes were on the island of Crete just a few hundred miles off shore.

Dolan used her Mossad "Do-whatever-I-want-in-Israeli-government-run-airlines" badge to book a flight and secure fake passports and luggage into the small Gulfstream medium transport. It only carried about fifty passengers but the rule of the capitalist world in Dolan's experience was that if you were rich, you were less likely to be searched, so all six members of the team got to ride first class where the food wasn't bad and the attendants pretended you had a name. They also secured the conference room on the plane which was soundproofed and bug swept by Chavez before Dolan cleared her throat and began the latest briefing.

"So we have it all planned out," Dolan said and set her paper on the table. Oddly enough, the only fake passports she had to aquire were for the true Israelis. She, Clark, Chavez, Vega and Johnston simply used their American passports and all was good.

"the flight will land in Crete and we'll just hop onto a boat to take us to Turkey. Clark," she nodded at the old person who was trying to not look so awkward in his Italian suit and Armeni tie (Dolan thought he actually looked pretty good) "Knows a couple of people there and they'll have a safe house all ready for us by the time we are there." She took a deep breath and prepared herself for the next part.

"As of this moment, we are off the charts people, we do not exist and we will no longer be in contact with the Israeli government; we certainly will not be receiving any further orders from there and will not have any sort of back up. What is here, is all we got."

"Damn," Zilich said "I left my lucky underwear in Tel Aviv!" everyone had a good chuckle at that.

"Back to the brief, our first contact with the cell's director was made at this IP address", she wrote it on the white board so they could see it, "And we've managed to track that down to an address in Istanbul. So we start there, and see if we can push any further through the lead."

"The suspect has been confirmed to be a Turkish government office holder, however we'll need to push the investigation to discover if he's the only agent in the terrorist attacks on our country or more likely if there are other governments at work here."

"We'll also need to keep in mind ma'am." Clark interrupted "That its quite possible that they _let_ us have this intel so they can weed us out easier."

"We'll stay on a short leash then." Dolan said.

The battle on the Golan Heights was to the Israeli's disadvantage. The massive Syrian and Lebanese tank groups swarmed over the three main fortifications the Israeli's had and while the bases held, they could not stem the invaders who were now pushing around and made their way onto the flats below. Those fortifications needed to be relieved GENIDF could see, and his reinforcements were already enroute, F-15 Ra'am fighters loaded with ground attack packages were stacked up a hundred kilometers away and four thousand meters above them. He regretted his earlier misconceptions about berating his comrade, GENIAF, for hiring Artemis corporation for consultant work. Already their A-20 stealth tank killers were streaking in low followed closely by IAF F-16 fighters for electronics jamming and SAM hunting with F-15 SE Stealth Eagles for light interceptor cover.

GENIDF marveled now about how smoothly this war was run, having Israel's army always excercising was now proving its worth as the AWACS crews directed air strikes toward the proper priority targets. He was back at headquarters, safe and sound as a general should (although he much rather preferred to be at the front), and watched the hologram that displayed all of the battlefields on one massive display. He was zoomed in on the battle for the Heights, but he quickly moved the display to check the Egyptian/Palestine front where a fierce artillery and infantry battle was taking place along the mountains that bordered Southern Israel. Even as he watched Israeli fighters streaked in and decimated the forward enemy tank and infantry columns with cluster bombs.

The Israelis had always had a smaller army than its opponents, but it had always been better.

"The enemy is closing." The radio order was given over the channel. "Make them regiment strength in tanks."

Sopot readied his weapons inside his foxhole. The defense plan was complicated, the ground was flat around the town as it was around Warsaw but there was also a long stretch of woods that surrounded it and provided his infantry with good natural cover. That was why he didn't deploy his commandos into it. His experience with flame weapons before had given him a more cautious stance against the Russian foe. Instead his commandos and the three hundred additional troops he commanded were dispersed in a ragged line of foxholes, the local enforcer contingent had plenty of Riot control equipment to spare, and these would become very useful indeed. The foxholes were dug a little bit wider than usual the better to contain the extra equipment each man now had in his defensive position. The ripping sound of artillery split the air as the first heavy shells fell on the forward positions in the forest, where the tank divisions were deployed and where the infantry were not.

"Enemy at twelve o'clock." The tank squadron commander said over the general channel. "Tanks and transports."

"Alpine and Rhine squadrons," the Colonel said coolly in German. "Weapons are free. Cut them up."

"Gladly." The squadron commanders had been a part of the action around Warsaw and were furious for not being able to lash out at the enemy at that disaster. He let into them eagerly, his four regular Enforcer Panthers and twenty reservist Leopard IIs fired their opening volley at maximum range and made sixteen kills while the Badger IFVs waited for the enemy to come a little closer before they engaged with missiles.

Russian artillery fire immediately shifted towards the Enforcer tanks, and Russian attack doctrine shifted on command. The remaining Russian tanks continued advancing at twenty KPH while the transports idled to deploy their infantry platoons who spread out and began firing missiles.

Six Leopards were destroyed and eight badgers exploded before Alpine and Rhine disengaged and fell back as per the plan, leaving the woods to the Russians.

Andreyev took his losses into stride, he'd lost a total of twenty three armored vehicles but that was negligible on his forward axis of advance. His attack was organized into a speartip formation, the better to pierce and punch through the circle. His enemy had learned, and were engaging him with their armored vehicles instead of leaving the infantry to shield them. They were retreating more readily to prolong the fight, but his SGB troops would eventually destroy them. His UAV spotter tagged the retreating tanks and noted that they were crossing over a line of foxholes where the Enforcer infantry had deployed.

Andreyev called in hydrogen gas canisters on their position, they'd burn as they had in Warsaw.

The ripping sound of artillery was louder, meaning it'd be coming straight down on them.

"Shields!" Sopot barked his command over the channel and lifted the Flourine Riot shield over the foxhole to cover it completely. The Riot shield was flat and heavy the clear carbon fiber coating contained a liquidy fluorine mixture that would slow rifle rounds and deflect exploding Molotov cocktails as Sopot had experienced earlier. Each foxhole had been dug in such a way that there were no mounds of dirt around the rims, everything was perfectly flat so that the shield could cover the entirety of the hole. Sopot ducked below as the shield went above him and the flammable gas canisters exploded above him. He hoped that his foxhole had been well dug, and that even a little gas wouldn't slip in.

"Enemy tanks are in the woods." The Enforcer colonel notified his troops. "and infantry."

"Wait for the signal." Sopot whispered on the channel. Above him the ripping sound became a roar as the air flared up and combusted. The gas however, finding few places to settle and the flame finding few fuel sources was burned up quickly in the air even though the grass field created visible walls of flame. The temperature rose exponentially but at least Sopot wasn't burning. His Lieutenants reported few casualties, and the majority of those had been those unlucky enough to get hit by a falling shell.

The motion sensor the engineer crews had placed in the fields earlier chimed in Sopot's HUD. The enemy tanks were now in perfect range.

"Now!" he snapped and pressed his own detonator.

All across the line, the European infantry sprung into action. The Polish captain in charge of the infantry had come up with the plan himself and it surely was a genious one. Sonic cannon hidden all over the woods immediately began to keen and wail. The decibles were so loud and sharp, all the Russian infantry began to collapse and convulse wildly and the Europeans who were safely contained in their foxholes popped from cover and fired missiles into the lead tank line who were caught completely off balance by such a swift counter attack. Mortar fire began landing amidst the tanks as well causing further chaos and confusion. The Russian squadron leader called for artillery support on the pre-designated coordinates but the Europeans had already tracked the incoming Russian shells with fire finder radars and had loosed their own volley before the Russians. The Russian artillery was savaged in a swift stroke and the Enforcer armored contingents counterattacked. Some of the Russian tanks had come too close to the line for missiles to be used but the Enforcer commando infantry were experienced in close quarters fighting and boarding a tank was no more difficult from clearing a house. Six Russian Ogres were boarded and destroyed as Panthers and Leopard IIs pushed around them chasing the Russians from the ground.

Colonel Andreyev cursed his luck and ordered a full retreat so he could regroup. These Europeans were better fighters than he thought. He'd have to keep that in mind as he moved his Ka-65 gunship squadrons into covering positions to discourage a European pursuit.

When Sopot rose from the foxhole and lead the charge, he hadn't known what to expect besides the fact that there would be a lot of them. He passed the burning hulk of a T-95 that had taken a tank round and a missile through the turret. His F2000 rifle clacked against his body plates and his HUD immediately tagged red threat icons around the Russian contingents who were rising. The Sonic cannon had an activation timer of thirty seconds of which to disorient the enemy infantry and had shut off now that the European infantry were coming in range. A Russian turned and gestured rapidly towards Sopot so Sopot knelt and fired off a burst. The Russian dropped and now sharp cracks of rifle fire danced in the air.

Sopot dropped prone and took a look around, his men were keeping good discipline, those that weren't shooting from behind Badger IFVs were advancing steadily behind pairs of men who had Shields raised.

He heard grenades go off, a slightly deeper note than rifle fire. The smell of smoke was almost unbearable, his gas mask would filter all the noxious and poisonous elements in the air but they did nothing to deflect smell. The dirt kicked up around him and the _snap snap_ of bullets passing close by made Sopot take aim and fire at the red marked figures in the woods. He'd been ordered to take prisoners where he could and those with Riot control weapons were best for that, but he had a killing rifle in his hands and that is what he would do with it. Let the others take prisoners. He'd be one of those notching his gun tonight.


	10. ENDEF

"Purpose for your visit ma'am?" the port guard asked pleasantly enough although Dolan noted that the safety on the hip holstered pistol was _off_.

"vacation." She only had a small carry on, it paid to travel light Clark had told her. The better to be in and out of ports quickly instead of waiting around for luggage in long lines.

"So few clothes though?" the guard's smile never broke.

"I plan to shop." Dolan smiled back. So silly that the country didn't guard its borders as well as the United States or Israel. Maybe the Turks didn't feel that they were touchable by any of their threats, was it because of their secret involvement in PLI? Or was it because they didn't think Israeli hands could reach this far? Dolan didn't know, only that their ignorance would cost them.

"Welcome to Turkey." The guard stamped the fake Cretian passport and moved her along. Even though Dolan was technically in charge of the operation, she insisted that Clark be the one to lead field teams due to his previous experience. She'd learned a new way of spying here, where everything was hidden by the smallest gestures. Clark continued to walk forward and the other six of the team fell in behind him spreading out but keeping him in periphials. Clark tipped his hat politely to a woman, and the others taking the signal immediately dispersed. They would take their own taxis, each of them had enough money in Swiss bank accounts to live like princes (or princesses in Dolan's case) in this country, if only for a month or two. They agreed to check into a Hyatt owned hotel along the beach front. Clark liked being by the sea, the Aegean air was cool and soothing for him.

They met up in the lobby, quietely agreed to meet up in Clark's room (smoking, because he said it would discourage door eavesdroppers and cigarette smoke could even disrupt shotgun microphones a little) and went their separate ways for dinner. Clark was waiting outside his door for the rest of them to appear, pretending to fumble with the lock.

They filed in quietely while Chavez swept the room for electronic listeners. "All clear." He nodded.

"Homer, go take a look on the windows, someone down there could have a shotgun microphone."

The former Rainbow sniper nodded and took a leisurely stroll outside with a pair of binoculars and appeared to look at nothing in particular through them.

"Alright Gentlemen, and Lady." Clark nodded. "We have our base of operations here, the Hyatt is American owned and therefore not completely under Turkish government control. We'll set up shop here and see where the trail leads us." He paused for a moment and took a breath. "I'm going to say right now, that I can't accompany you on most of the missions. I'm just too old for that, I'll be here. I've brought the DKL monitoring systems so I can keep control of you guys without being in field."

"The encryption systems should hold." Peled said. "I tweaked them myself, its got a TAPDANCE random patterned encryption but its faster than TAPDANCE of course, also its not a true radio. It'll hook up on local cells so we'll get pretty much unlimited range on them. Drawbacks is that battery life is only about four hours so everyone needs to pack at least three whenever we go on field missions. Its rechargeable from standard sockets."

"If it uses a TAPDANCE encryption, how will we decrypt it without the right equipment here?" Chavez asked.

"The TAPDANCE encryption of course, uses a one time use randomized code that is stored in the millions in almost every professional intelligence operation center in the world. It wasn't hard to pull a few dozen of the codes out of the Mossad network, and upload them into the DKL systems and PDAs. I've also taken the liberty to upgrade our personal phones with the STU-9 Encryption code the FBI uses." Peled nodded toward Dolan who had provided the encryption, courtesy of Dan Murray the Director of the Bureau.

"Its still secure." Chavez shrugged "But lets not use cells too often, with the internet access all our phones have now, it wouldn't be too hard to detect even with the encryption. All they need to do is pick us up and the gig's over."

"Agreed." Peled nodded again.

"Good. We'll take callsigns here. I'll use my old one _Variable_." Clark said.

"Secant." Chavez shrugged. "Me, Oso, and Homer."

"It'd better switch during real operations though." Homer called from outside. "JC is needed more on the ground and you'll need me somewhere where I can see everyone. If we're talking trig here, I'll take Tangent."

"Okay so then us and you then." Chavez nodded toward Zilich.

"That leaves us with… Cosine" David Peled said after a moment of thought. It would be Peled Dolan and Stuart.

"We'll sort out numbers later." Clark nodded "But tomorrow morning, we start our operation."

"Left full rudder!" the Captain barked the CIC of INC Hamas was lit in the red glow of battlestations operations and gave everyone working there a sinister image. "Reverse port screw!"

"My rudder is left full!" the helmsman on the bridge shouted over the intercom. A pair of missiles splashed harmlessly into the water, unable to match the corvette's sharp turn. It wasn't skirmishing any longer, the Turkish Navy had decided to be smart and concentrate its forces against the much smaller Northern Flotilla of the INF. Commodore Simon on the destroyer INC Zealot had given a general scatter order against the much larger navy. The Israeli's were outgunned at least five to one, and the enemy numbers began proving their worth. A ship that had twenty missiles locked on couldn't escape them all. Five corvettes like INC Hamas had found that out the hard way.

Traditional Naval tactics dictated a concentration of forces as opposed to the ragged bands that the Turkish navy faced, however the Israeli's had practiced two ship formations and the tactic was beginning to show its advantages.

Each pair of ships (the flotilla now had ten such units) was capable of pursuing its own individual agenda to work for the greater good of the battle. They were no longer a single great sword, more like a dozen little daggers. INC Hamas and her partner corvette INC Rivka steamed at forty knots towards the Turkish fleet, closing to nearly ten miles: point blank range in naval terms. Working with them were IAF fighter plane and helicopter forces and with the Hamas/Rivka team (Yellow team) were a pair of IAF UH-60 Seahawks equipped with a pair of Harpoon American anti-ship missiles.

The teams were trained to concentrate fire on one individual target at the time, enabling the original flotilla of 26 to engage and destroy 13 enemy ships every ten minutes. Yellow team under Captain Gregorich's direction, had already picked off two, a corvette and a destroyer. The drone patrol craft that were under INC Rivka's control maneuvered frantically in covering positions and could not only act as extra firepower from the Mk 48 ADCAP torpedoes that were loaded on, but could also serve as shields to block incoming torpedoes and missiles. Even now, the sonar operator shouted "Torpedo in the water!" and a few minutes later one of the drones moved to intercept it, interposing itself in the torpedoes path where it detonated under the hull and exploded, snapping the small ship in half.

"Battery firing solution sir!" the PWO shouted from his station.

"Shoot on generated bearings-"

The PWO signaled for the three sailors under his command to begin firing the starboard 40mm. "Wind two at zero eight zero, gun ready!" the sailor tracking the windspeed shouted, the wind could drastically change the direction of even 40mm rounds at ranges of five miles.

"elevate ten degrees and fire for effect!" The PWO snapped and his men complied quickly, the cannon popping off a quick three rounds which struck the aft end of a Turkish corvette. The PWO ordered slight direction changes and rounds began to stitch all the way across the hull where they finally found good marks on the glass bridge. The destroyer's brain exploded in a shower of sparks and smoke as four rounds found targets.

"Rivka signals: good kill!" the electronics officer shouted.

"Move to target Tango six, give them a three tone. Helm come about to zero nine zero, right full rudder."

"Aye sir, make my course zero nine zero, rudder is right full."

"Aye sir, three tone jamming is now in effect- woah! That's a hit!" the Electronics warfare officer shouted.

"Captain, Tango six is dead in the water." The radar officer shouted over the noise of the counterbattery officer firing off a missile.

"Short circuited his firing and navigation sir!" the EWO looked away from his screen and grinned. "broke through the radio firewalls and hammered 'em!"

"Good work, tell Rivka to finish it."

Bronco was bringing in the second flight of A-20s, Reaper 3 was down for repairs after discovering he was having problems with his thrust vectoring system, a Queer instead slotted in formation. Four lightnings escorted in 6 Razorback ground attack fighters. The battle for the heights was raging, with an Israeli counter attack already underway. Two of the bases had fallen already, the last bastion on the heights was held by the 7th mechanized infantry and was holding fast. If the Syrians and Lebanese were able to hold the heights, they could rain down fire on the Sea of Galilee and reinforce at will. Israeli artillery, both tube and rocket, was lashing out on enemy positions on the heights to cover the tanks and infantry beginning their climb up the roads.

"Reaper flight, Gemini," the on station AWACS snapped. "four plus enemy helos bearing zero one five, cleared to engage."

The fourteen stealth fighters were coming in low at super cruise (over mach 1) speed, they were screaming over the leading echelon of Israeli reinforcements now. Israel had never historically had much Artillery although numbers had increased exponentially after the Yom Kippur War. The commander in charge of the artillery was wise though, his artillery was all already deployed locked in and raining fire down on the Syrian positions, directing specific attention to Syrian artillery units preparing to set up as well. They were directed by Hegemon and its look down radar.

The artillery paused for a moment to let the Air groups in, Bronco spotted a massive wave of helicopters, Russian built Ka-65s with Israeli markings, flash under him. Four enemy helos versus that many? They wouldn't even need Bronco to clear the way for them, but it was a nice gesture to make him feel involved. He kicked the fighter into a sharp climb to bring up over the heights and pop up-

"Good tone, Fox two!" Bronco had opened his doors and fired off a sidewinder just as a second alarm went off-

"Devils, I've got locks!" Bronco began a tight roll and punched chaff and flares, ground based mobile SAMs had acquired his cross section as his missile doors opened, but locked onto his infrared signature after they had closed. He nosed over toward the ground, he was so close he clipped off a burst from his cannon seeing it shred an armored vehicle on the ground just as he pulled out of his sharp dive.

"Good kill Lead." The Queer pilot, Reaper 9, noted. "Jamming pods are going loud, Rodeo flight, cleared hot, attack direction south."

"Copy guns hot." The razorback flight leader responded. Bronco looped around to form up behind the leading pair of Razorbacks picked out a target for themselves, a tank column that had to be dozens of tracks long. The first pass was done with clusterbombs, Razorbacks had four bomb bay doors each loaded with smart cluster munitions which decimated the columns. On the return pass, infrared trackers locked onto the small fuzzy heat sources and fired, but F-16I fighters from Israel already dove low and began their Wild Weasel operations, flashing in and out of the columns to drop flares and decoy chaff to deflect locks. None of the SAMs hit and the Razorbacks set their sites on individual columns now, lightly armored vehicles and infantry carriers began scattering-

"Guns guns guns!" the calls went out over the channel in a flurry of noise as the Razorbacks opened up with their 40 mm cannon. The fighter was basically built on the same principle as the old A-10 Warthog (which was still in service in the US Army, against all odds to decommission the pig) in that the entire air frame was built around a massive Vulcan gun that went from nose to afterburners. The weapon was shorter than the old Vulcan but was just as accurate and fired the same sized 40mm depleted uranium Sabot projectile, a single one could kill a tank and these were being used with devastating effect.

The Razorbacks on gun attack runs were required to slow their speeds to track targets, and the built in elevator fan helped greatly for this, the pilots opening the doors to their fans to push air in the jetstream out the top of the fighter to retard it almost to speeds of 100 knots, which was the limit of the fighters ability to stay aloft. Six Razorbacks shredded the Syrian reinforcement columns. Bronco made his long covering pass around and saw the Israeli KA-65s pop up over the ledge to strike a hammer blow at the lead echelon with just as devastating an effect as the Razorbacks on the tail columns.

This was what happened when an enemy allowed total air superiority over a battlefield, Winters observed, and made a long pass back to rearm and refuel so they would continue to have total superiority.


	11. Spy games

"Variable, this is Cosine one." That was Dolan speaking. "Subject A is leaving the house now."

"Sounds about right." Clark muttered to himself. The man was a well educated individual that worked in the Turkey's department of defense. "Whats the dress code?"

"grey sports jacket, blue tie. The usual." Clark chuckled to himself back in the hotel room. The man was (as they all had discovered after a good electronics infiltration last night by Peled) a reasonably high placed individual in the Turkish department of defense. But oddly enough, wasn't taking the precautions that other individuals in the Bureau or Agency would have taken back in the States. Well, not everyone thought the same way as the Agency did they? And everyone was prone to pattern forming, its what intelligence was based off of. That and discreet observations on the most benign of subjects. Clarks experience in the Agency was a mixture of special forces work and Sherlock Holmes, where even the way someone dressed could clue an operative in as to how the person would function.

It also helped that the man hadn't noticed the jogger that had suddenly appeared every day at the same time around his house in the morning. Clark heard Dolan huffing as she presumably reached her target heart rate.

"Cosine one is passing Subject A" Peled, Cosine two, said. Clark didn't have a good visual feed here, that would be recorded into MP3 files so Clark could discreetly watch them on his Ipod later so he only had the radio chatter to tell him what was going on. How he wished to be out there with them but he was too old for this sort of game any longer. Just this last operation- he told himself though he knew it could never actually be the last one- and then it will all be over.

Subject A was an active walker, one of those environmental health nuts of the day and age. He worked out often in the evening, drove a Volkswagen MB-2 electric, walked often, tended to stay away from meat and ate organic foods and drank lots of water. Although the drinking pattern didn't appear to disregard a morning cup of coffee at the local shop, or frequent visits to nightclubs.

Clark didn't think his wife knew about those visits, or if she did she hadn't reacted to them yet. Subject A had numerous vices, between binge drinking, snorting lines of crack and had a powerful weakness for belly dancers and young girls. This was something to exploit.

"Excuse me sir," Clark heard Patricia Dolan saunter up to the man. She was affecting a very breathy voice, Clark suddenly found himself trying to focus on the operation. "you look lost, can I _help_ you?"

The man said something inaudible. Peled would be scanning them close by along with Stuart and with Homer Johnston on overwatch (he mentioned something about the roof of a close by apartment) and Secant team waiting with the rented car for pick up. Secant one, Chavez, would be with the pick up car and the other two would be on tracking duty, mirroring Subject A's movements for the remainder of the day.

"Well you have that appearance, here you dropped this by the way sir." That would be Dolan's womanly charms working. She would be handing Subject A a slip of paper right now, with a phone number jotted down along with the name of the nighclub he frequented. "have a good day!" she said as seductively as she could. Clark laughed, making sure the microphone was shut off. He'd have to make a call to a certain Dr. Bellow, PH.D back in the states soon, but the psychiatric work here wasn't that hard to analyze. Subject A was a sexual addict and the thought of a girl coming to him was something his ego wouldn't ignore. He'd show up tonight and get his present.

"Clear!"

"Clear!"

"_Clear!"_

"Clear building captain!" the lieutenant of First squad called.

"Tank on the road!" a man shouted and the linked HUD in Sopot's helmet immediately tagged the hostile even though he couldn't see it. The red outline of a Type 100 tank appeared through the wall and floor as he rushed towards the window to see the tank bring its main cannon to bear on the building. Three men fired grenades which exploded harmlessly off its armor, a more enterprising man soon after tossed a Semtex plastic explosive onto the tank but it had the same effect. The turret continued to turn and it fired its napalm thrower into the bottom floor.

Sopot ducked instinctively and even though he had his grenade launcher ready, he couldn't bring himself out to defy the Russian tank and in fact he couldn't do anything but quiver helplessly and stare at one of the shot out computers that sparked and fried in front of him, there was nothing he could do but just sit there and quiver and he couldn't stop thinking about the flames and the tank and how he would eventually be consumed with flame along with his screaming men and women the tanks wouldn't stop there they'd continue shooting and killing and his men wouldn't be able to do anything but die and writhe in agony he was lucky he didn't get burned that first day but why was he thinking about that-

"Epee, Epee report."

Sopot shook himself out of it. "Epee here, all squads upright."

"pull back out of the building, we have Saber platoon with heavy weapons directly on the road south of you. They'll cover you."

"There's a fucking tank out there if you haven't noticed!" Sopot wondered why he screamed.

"Four of them, and if you stay there Captain Illych Sopot, you will be killed. Lead your troops out of there." Lancer cut the channel.

"All squads, we need to get back onto the street, Saber will cover us." He called to his platoon.

"How? Its three hundred meters from here to a good piece of cover!" the Italian lieutenant of Second squad shouted over the roar of a machine gun.

"Move!" Sopot barked.

"Sir! First squad on me!" Sopot thundered downstairs just in time to see the lieutenant signal one of his men to fire a grenade out the door. The flare lit up the street for a few blinding seconds, possibly enough to overload the Tanks thermal sights. Second squad dashed out the door.

The thunderclaps of several grenades going off died down and Sopot signaled for first and third squad to go. The looming barrel of the T-100 Ogre began its slow turn towards them.

A missile hissed overhead and struck the turret in a second blinding flash, Sopot turned to see a BMW minivan with its windows smashed out spin around and drive out, dark shapes inside were reloading the wire guided missile launcher. The driver of the car was excellent throwing the minivan that had probably driven children to local football games into a series of evasive weaves which the tank couldn't track. The cannon boomed once and a building a little to the right of where the van turned exploded in dust, showering Sopot and his platoon in the cloud. The men and women began a fire and movement pattern, with squads taking positions and turning to lay covering fire as the rest moved forward in a deadly leapfrog game.

The buzzing sound of a UCAV made Sopot look up, two missiles streaked out and finished off the tank clearing the way for Sopot and first platoon to retreat.

"Lancer, this is Epee, what's the situation?" Sopot asked breathless.

"They've pushed through the outer lines Epee, we need you to fall back to the Tango satellite uplink, the Russians have begun a massive uplink crash and if we lose them, we lose our coordination with European command."

Andreyev had selected his plan carefully, based on the opinions of his Spetsnaz captains he'd let his units infiltrate the outer lines as quickly and quietly as they could to disrupt and open lanes for his armored groups to enter the city. He had three major lanes opened on the Eastern side of Hanburg and he'd focused all of his armor groups there in a massive blitz that pulverized the foxholes that had disrupted his first attack. There were no civilians left besides a few of the civilian personel that worked the satellite uplinks. The office buildings were abandoned, the city fight would concentrate mostly on infantry which Andreyev was sure he would succeed with. After the initial breakthrough, a wave of Mi-82 heavy transport/gunships escorted by Howlers streaked in to land at predesignated sites to seize strategic points and uplinks. Resistance was now becoming heavier as the Enforcer troops sprang to life, it appeared that the tank reserves were located around the uplink sites, bad news for his Spetsnaz riflemen. Badger AFVs were giving his gunships a lot of trouble and his transports were beginning to wave off the landings to deploy their troops to safer areas. His forward tank units were now reporting the Enforcers were employing hit and run tactics using missile launchers and local vehicles.

No plan survived contact with the enemy Andreyev groused and hoped that the Euros weren't too serious about eliminating this city and its satellite uplinks, they might use one of their orbital lasers to do it and Andreyev didn't want to be around when that card was played.

"Got him." Secant one, Chavez said over the channel. "Yeah he's all divvied up. Looks nice, Italian suit, blue tie."

"So formal." Dolan groused and checked her makeup one last time. She'd chosen a very slutty dress, a brilliantly red tube of clothing that had cuts in the back that showed off her curves in a very suggestive way. She felt she looked nice. And the way she had her hair done framed her face the same way it had during Senior prom. It also covered the radio earphone. No one else of course could hear her because she didn't have a good place to hold her bead mike, but that didn't really matter she'd only be out of touch for a couple of hours.

It hadn't been hard to seduce the owner of the club either, to reserve a "special room" in the back that was soundproofed. Well, seduced wasn't really the right word, Dolan reflected. It was more about money although the fact that the owner of the club had eyes that shifted from her eyes to her breasts constantly boosted Dolan's self esteem. Thirty one and still packing, it seemed.

"Just walked through the door." Chavez noted.

"Show time." Dolan took a deep breath, tried on a beaming smile, then an impish one for size (adding that twisting index finger too) and stepped out onto the dance floor where the young people were doing what young people did. Zilich was sitting on a couch with a lovely looking girl on his lap and they seemed to be enjoying themselves. Zilich, still smiling caught Dolans eye and flicked them towards the bar. Dolan brushed her hair discreetly in response and walked over to Farrad- no he was Subject A.

She brushed her hand up his back and smiled as he turned. The man was fifty and definitely not Dolan's type his breath smelled even now and his taste in liquor was…poor. Wasn't he Muslim? What was he doing drinking?

"Darling!" she said in English, trying on some sort of accent for size.

"Miss." Subject A nodded and smiled, leaning forward and expecting something else. Dolan grimaced inwardly and kissed him. "I must say," Subject A said "you are very bold for such a young girl."

HA! Dolan thought and couldn't help but smile and brush her right thigh at that.

"I am young, I am alive, I am happy." She turned and signaled for a drink and reached for the small bowl of peanuts and dates. "And I am in love."

"In love you say?" Subject A smiled like he was forty years younger. "What makes you say that?"

"When I see you, I feel strange things like no one else before." Dolan giggled and covered her mouth in the way she had seen so many other floozy girls do. "I know I am in love here."

"May I ask you a question miss…"

"Maria Antonelli." Dolan let the man's mustache brush her offered hand.

"Italian?"

"Yes."

"Your accent is almost gone." The man sipped his drink and signaled for another.

"_Gratzi_," Dolan giggled again and stood up to the surprise of Subject A. she grabbed his hand and gestured with her free index finger trying the impish smile. Subject A read the message wrong immediately, gulping down his drink in one go and loosening his tie. Dolan lead Subject A across the dance floor where he let go of her hand and assumed Dolan wanted to dance. Dolan looked back and into his eyes, he was living in a fantasy there and therefore was very prone to suggestion. Dolan laughed out loud and reached for his hand again pulling him as she shook her head. He recognized the path now, toward the "quiet rooms" (which Dolan assumed didn't stay quiet for long).

"You are too bold!" Subject A laughed over the music, he was at the top of his game a new girl after the one he'd had the night before, he'd never felt better!

Dolan opened the room, leaving it dark but she knew the bed was there invitingly. Subject A groped her rear making her jump forward and almost blow her cover but she hid it and smiled.

"You are too bold as well." Dolan laughed back. "I believe you must be disciplined."

"Oh yes!" Subject A was through the door almost insultingly fast and was in the strong arms of Stuart and Peled a moment later.

"What is this?" he laughed not realizing in his drunken stupor that the hands on his arms weren't those of the female type.

"Mr. Farad" Clark flipped on the lights after Dolan shut the door. There was a M9 pistol in his hand, Dolan drew her more covert pistol, the Mossad issued "palm gun", from between her breasts and covered the Turkish defense worker.

"You are known to be a very good talker." Clark said as Stuart and Peled tied the man to the bed post. Now Subject A's eyes grew wide and sober. This was real, not some sexual deviance. Clark rolled up his sleeves to show the Navy SEALs tattoo on his forearm. "I happen to be a very good listener and I hear you have lots of stories you would like to tell us about Turkish interests in the Holy Land."


	12. True Israeli

The southern front was holding, Egypt's massive tank and infantry force had been halted at the mountains with the combined Israeli Jordanian counterattack. GENIDF was pleased by this, because his forces on the heights were being hard pushed now that Turkish reinforcements and their new APAT tanks were bolstering wounded columns. He could possibly shift reserves northward where they would desperately needed.

GENIAF was pleased as well, his air forces were performing much better than expected something he decided was due to the Artemis corporation sorties. The two squadrons alone had accumulated nearly sixty kills, averaging two kills per air to air conflict. He'd talked with Avi Ben Jacob, and there were reports of discipline breaking down in the other air forces, so quickly had they been decimated. Enemy pilots were now actually refusing to fly, their morale was almost completely broken and in GENIAFs long experience, it was morale that was most crucial to pilots. All pilots thought themselves to be on top of the world, flying at Mach speeds usually boosted egos, to have it smacked down denied the enemy a weapon as important as a long range missile or countermeasures.

GENINF in contrast to this was worried very much. The Israeli Navy was having a tough time repelling enemies from Israeli waters and he'd had reports of small numbers of infiltrators slipping in the gaps of Israeli radar coverage as well as surface vessel formations radar. The INF traditionally was not as well funded as the other three military branches (the Mossad considered an active part of the military because of its direct link to special operations units) because Israel had never seriously considered the possibility of a seaborne invasion, not many nations had in fact considered the possibility. The last great seaborne invasion was the D-Day invasion of WWII and for some reason most people considered that a fantasy.

It was definitely real, GENINF was working closely with GENIAF on hunting these units, but he was ordered by Israeli Parliament to direct his attention to the opponents shores, specifically Egypt and Turkey. He had three diesel electric submarines for that purpose, loaded with Harpoon missiles and a bay full of old Tomahawks. The Tomahawks were nuclear tipped, and therefore the most powerful weapon in the Israeli arsenal. The land hugging programs of a Tomahawk cruise missile in addition to its relatively short range made the orbital satellites of Europe and the US completely useless against this.

The nuclear option here was still available to Israel.

What he didn't know was that it was also readily available for her enemies.  
-

0500, Tel Aviv.

Oracle was aloft along the Mediterranean, directing old P-3 Orions and Seahawks on Antisub and antisurface warfare. They'd only been working along the west coast for about six days and they'd already racked up twelve surface kills and two subsurface kills. The Seahawks Viper AGMs were very good at seeking out surface targets it seemed.

The pilot used to be a captain in the US navy aviators and although out of military service, the crew chiefs still referred to him as Captain and the others by ranks given to them by the corporation. Two F-15 SE silent eagles were paired up six hundred meters above him.

The old E-2 Hawkeye turboprop climbed to four thousand meters and activated her lookdown radars to begin the mornings sweep-

"Radar tracks!" a radar control officer shouted. The blips were numerous, and even though surface conditions were bad due to heavy winds (waves did appear on radar unfortunately) the unmistakable blip of hovercraft landing barges and a full Amphibious landing unit and escorts was not to be missed. The control director strode the three steps over and peered.

"How did the navy let _that_ slip?" he shouted as he saw the unmistakable blip of the ex American MAU carrier. "Jam their radar!" he shouted over the plane intercom and snapped a finger at the electronics warfare technician. "Full octave aye!"

"Incoming bogeys vectoring in at one nine seven!" the air threat operator shouted from his station.

"It's a full scale attack!" the director alerted everyone and punched in a command on the overhang computer on the official emergency override.

"Jockey one and two, we've got twenty incoming bandits at one nine seven angels thirty and heading right for us. Snap to base heading; weapons are cleared hot." The air threat operator vectored the two escorts to intercept the twenty fighters heading toward them as the captain of Oracle began to turn the plane around and get some distance. It wouldn't be much, turboprops definitely couldn't outrun supersonic fighters.

"Attention all forces, this is a stage one alert repeat this is a stage one alert." The control directors voice was remarkably calm, he had a job to do and panicking would only hamper his effort. "Enemy surface naval forces and numerous landing craft are heading towards the beaches at grid three six niner, this is a general warning to all Israeli forces. Estimate them to be division strength, armor aircraft and infantry." He said and punched a button to repeat it. It would go out to all Israeli forces radio channels within two hundred miles. Even as he spoke, six Osprey VTOL craft lifted off of the marine amphibious unit carrier and darted forward fast and low as they had been designed. Israel was being invaded by the sea.

Six hovercraft were dispersed from the carrier along with a number of amphibious landing vehicles, old remnants from the Vietnam era armed with slow turning twin 50 caliber machine guns. They streaked in at forty knots over deep water (or in the hovercraft's case, over it) and made for the beaches.

The surfers and daily beachgoers were gone now, with Israeli war warnings placing restrictions on the beach they were all but deserted. The hovercraft skimmed to a halt by the waterline and began deploying, T-95 tanks and Stryker combat AFVs made up the first wave. The only initial resistance was in the form of off duty lifeguards that happened to be there. Their resistance came in the form of radio calls to headquarters which were immediately directed to the police headquarters and then to the local barracks. By the time on sight units were mustered, three squadrons of tanks and AFVs and at least a battalion of infantry were in Tel Aviv and heading towards the television, radio and internet modem stations.

But the second wave of landing units were running into difficulty. Oracle's call had reached the BARCAP (Barrier Combat Air Patrol) Artemis flyers (second flight) and a pair of Seahawks with Viper AGMS on surface hunting missions. Both were loaded with ground attack munitions and the Artemis F-35s had air to air capability. The Egyptian air cover was reduced for the second wave, with the first wave attacking the Tel Aviv air base without much success. Oracle had also reached the counter air controller of the base who immediately illuminated his SAM units, Egyptian F-16s swooped in outfitted for wild weasel AA suprresion and began lighting off their Antiradiation missiles to home in on the incomings. Two missiles found targets on the base's main radar array and destroyed it and four SAM batteries were savaged. Two F-16s weren't so lucky, ZPU flak which was manually controlled by well practiced gun crews tore through two of them, the hulks smashed onto the number two runway and temporarily rendered it useless.

Two F-35Is were scrambled first, using a combination of afterburners, vertical thrust vectoring and the shortened number two runway, they were able to "Scram launch" at about half the length of a normal takeoff. Egyptian fighters slashed downwards toward them but missed their gun passes, Egyptian pilots found hitting a rapidly moving target on the ground that was also elevating wasn't as easy as it seemed.

By the time the Egyptian fighters were able to turn for their second pass, another six fighters had lifted off, all of the F-16 pattern. A masterpeice of chaos and confusion played out above Tel-Aviv, Egyptian and Israeli pilots alike were unable to distinguish friends from foe while they pulled punishing six G turns and tried to align gun pips on their targets. The Israeli's were given the order to flip on their transponders by the counter air commanders and suddenly gun tracers began lighting up the morning air. Two Egyptians fell first, they were SU-35s and easier to distinguish of course. Then an Israeli F-16. An Egyptian F-16 was destroyed by an F-35. Soon the Egyptians just began to take too many casualties and the Israeli air power began throwing its full weight toward the sea cutting off air reinforcements so the battle was abandoned.

The groups on the ground found the hard way what it meant for an entire population to be trained to fight for war. Resistance was fierce for the infantry, when they entered houses they found most residents not all too happy to find an armed soldier kicking down their doors and took measures to defend themselves with what was present.

Avi Ben Jakob, Director of Mossad, had the majority of his special forces troops in the city because for the most part, the battles were direct army confrontations. Being unused special forces which made them very eager for combat, he unleashed them to wreak havoc on whatever they came across. Many Egyptian armored units suddenly found themselves taking fire from corner shot weapons which included a 30mm grenade launcher. Urban warfare was something Israeli's had perfected over sixty years ago and their weapons and tactics had been honed by at least forty years of terrorist hunting. Egyptian infantry just could not match their opponents but fighting was fierce nonetheless.

Benjamin Al Issad, had always been on the brunt end of Israeli society, even after his acceptance into the Special Forces Mossad community. He was part of the Ra division, the deep strike special forces group tasked with hitting targets well within enemy lines with little to no support, but still that didn't seem to erase the fact that he was Palestinian by birth and Muslim by faith.

"Tangos on the street." He whispered into his boom mike and used the corner shot attatchment of his Micro TAR-21 to tag hostiles on his HUD. "counting at least a full squad."

Issad loved Israel, loved living in a country where, even if he was part of a discriminated minority, still gave him equal rights despite the fact that the majority of his people hated the government to the core. Issad hadn't tried to dodge the out of Secondary school draft unlike most other Palestinians, he embraced his education and understood that the only way his people would be accepted was if they did so peacefully. Palestinians were feared by the Israeli government for their association with terrorism. Issad's duty, he felt, was to prove to the Israelis that Palestinians were people just like them. Here was his chance to prove that he could fight just as hard for Israel as the others.

"On target." A squadmate said. "No discipline." No they really didn't, they shouldn't be walking in such an exposed position like that, even if they had an armored vehicle next to them. Issad heard scuffling behind him and he turned to see the squad leader run by. He received an encouraging pat of the head here. He was accepted by his squadmates now, and that was all he ever asked of them. The squad leader ducked underneath the window that Issad had mounted his rifle on and snapped his own corner shot rifle around, the silenced Galil version.

"Another squad coming up, I think it's a platoon." The squad leader whispered. "Pick your targets carefully, Meesha take the vehicle." Issad fullscreened the cornershot image on his HUD and settled the crosshairs on a red bereted soldier. He had to at least be the squad leader.

"_Shoot!"_ the squad leader shouted and Issad squeezed off a quick double tap. His target fell along with two others, a concussion grenade exploded in the street and a wheel was blown off the Stryker combat vehicle. Shouts from the street erupted as the soldiers scrambled for cover. Issad tracked carefully and took another trooper with a double tap. It was almost too easy, the cornershot system developed twenty years before gave the Israeli's the advantage of being able to shoot without exposing themselves. Combining it with the next generation Heads Up Display Israeli Defense Developers Corp had created and fielded to Special Forces troops enabled each individual Mossad operative unparalleled offense and defense in urban environments. He killed a third with a third double tap and then ducked out. after three, the enemy would have identified his position so he moved quickly to vacate the window. His squad leader tossed a fragmentation grenade out the window before vacating. Issad ran into the next room of what had been a very upper class apartment complex to see an IDF soldier fire a shoulder mounted rocket, an AT-10 American weapon, probably at the Stryker who's 7.62mm cannon began burping to life.

He marveled at how here, in combat, no one cared that he was Palestinian and Muslim. Here on the battlefield he was equal. Issad turned and sighted up on one of those Egyptian soldiers on the street who would dare to take this newfound freedom away from him.

"Stop." Clark gestured with a flick and Peled and Stuart hauled the man out of the bucket of water. The man threw his head out and gasped, sobbing.

"I swear that's all I have to tell you!" he sobbed again. The man had not been very hard to break, just an hour or two of dunking the man into the bucket to simulate drowning. Okay, it wasn't simulated drowning, they _were_ drowning him, they just pulled him out before he could completely drown. Amazing what one could do with the simplest of things. Clark hadn't even had to break a few fingers.

"I don't want to have to do that again, Mr. Farad." Clark shook his head as Dolan reviewed his notes. They'd struck a gold mine in information here, even Clark admitted quietely that breaks _never_ came this quickly in an operation. "You're hiding something. Your eyes betray you." Clark said in his best Turkish.

"I swear that's it-" Clark flicked his fingers and the man's head was ducked into the bucket again. he struggled and bubbles frothed.

"He's lying." Clark shrugged and tried to blott out the noise, it was always unpleasant doing field interrogations. "Can you figure out why?" he asked Dolan. Dolan undid her hair, it looked nice but damn it was uncomfortable with all that hairspray. She liked it down where it could flow freely.

"He's been contacted by that Russian man, but he's on European payroll, it doesn't make any sense." Dolan shook her head. "As a budget director, he's been sliding funds over to the PLO, but for the Europeans? Why? It would make more sense for the Russians, they want to control the Oil fields in this area."

Subject A was hauled out of the bucket again and they let him rest for a few minutes. Clark's phone rang and he set it to speaker.

"Variable, Go ahead."

"Paps, its me." Chavez's voice said. "We took a look at the guys home computer like you said."

"Say hi, your on speaker." Clark said.

"Hola Mr. F." Chavez said "You have a pretty wife." Subject A wailed while Clark pressed the phone to his ear.

"What do you got?" Clark asked.

"This guy's definitely been on European payroll, from the European defense minister no less, we managed to track the electronic footprint from here."

"He had it all on his home computer?"

"He isn't very smart like we thought." It sounded like Chavez shrugged. "Childsplay on the security. Homer's gotten good at that stuff. But anyway, we took a look through his email and dump files, and we pulled up this string of numbers and a PO box number in Lebanon."

"Why is that curious?" Clark asked.

"Remember when Mr. Ryan was over for dinner that one day?" Clark was good friends with Jack Ryan, former Director of Intelligence in the CIA, and former President as well. "You guys were reliving the glory days?"

"Which time was that?"

"It was like maybe ten years ago, Sally just came from Notre Dame, and Robby Jackson got wasted-"

"Yeah yeah I remember." So did that spot on the carpet from where he vomited. What was it about former politicians not being able to hold their liquor?

"you guys were talking about NLCs and keys I remember and Robby recited his out loud…"

"And got himself shut up by secret service, yeah I remember."

"Well it's a twelve number code, and the Russians use those too right?"

"Right, where you going with this son?"

"the Iranians used those too on their ICBMs, and I don't think the Saudi's managed to blow all of them up…"

Clark didn't understand the implications behind that for another couple of minutes, then his back stiffened and he shot Subject A through the head without warning. Stuart and Peled jumped up from surprise.

"Pack up now." Clark said, "We're leaving."

"Variable, Cosine two." Zilich's voice came over the radio. "We've got company, an army truck just pulled up to the street and they don't look friendly."


	13. Nothings right with the world!

"Is all right with the world?" CINCNORAD asked as usual before he left.

"Nothing's right with the world!" the ops crew responded as they had done every day.

"Carry on!" CINCNORAD walked out. He looked over his schedule on his phone and noted that they would conduct an ICBM launch drill tomorrow, something that would loosen up the schedule a little. It gave his men and women something to do besides monitor satellites and listen in on Russian or European radio chatter from across the globe. It would give him something to do as well, since he would be overseeing the drill. He powered on his laptop to go over the drill in detail; ah it wouldn't merely be a simulation tomorrow, they would conduct alignment redirection and actual firing drills of the "Rods from God".

Everything except for the actual firing would be real he noted. The orbital platforms would be conducting real evasive and maneuvering burns, would really lock onto things that weren't there, and then –they wouldn't fire. They'd just pretend to fire and they'd pretend to hit and the war would imaginarily be won. CINCNORAD sipped his morning coffee and read over the drill in detail again.

Things were heating up in the Pacific and the Atlantic, but the purpose of the kinetic weapons platforms, destroying 3 stage ICBMs in midflight wasn't really called for anymore. Every nation noting that the shield had gone up disarmed or completely abandoned 3 stage nuclear missiles. CINCNORADs main job of protecting the United States of America from ICBM attack had been completed almost twenty years ago.

It was a race against time now. CINCSPACE/CYBER had his men on site now and they were beginning their viral uploads. He snatched up the Email quickly and scanned it; it would take twelve hours for a complete virus upload, and then it would take a simple codeword to shut down all the satellites in the area. A second more alarming email arrived almost immediately from the On site commander. It was rather terse.

INFILTRATOR DETECTED

CINCSPACE/CYBER thought that the commander was merely noting that they had detected the European viruses but then remembered that the type of message to convey it would be codeworded "Worm". The commander deliberately noted that they were "infiltrators" meaning enemy. So the Russians wanted these satellites that desperately and saw an opening for them to exploit.

CINCSPACE/CYBER shot off a quick reply to the commander to get his people out of there, then sent one to General Bankole about the situation. He was in Normandy at the moment surveying the invasion force that was arming to invade Britain. They had joined the war on the side of the Americans and were aiding them in their invasion of Iceland. Britain was the newest threat and Bankole thought they should be destroyed swiftly.

It would be on his authority then. He called the Rammstein Uplink base who controlled the number 18 orbital laser platform and ordered it to begin an overwatch burn to Hanburg. CINC EAST had been right, they could not risk a loss in this town, and if the Europeans couldn't win, the Russians couldn't either. It would be the same with the Americans. CINCSPACE/CYBER had his own plan in motion to deal with them.

"why have you not given me my goddamn breakthrough?" Russian Commander In Chief West roared over the conference chat. Andreyev remained stone faced.

"You must understand sir, the Europeans hold very well against our troops. Their tactics have adjusted since the first day of the war."

"Excuses are for the weak." General Isotov, War minister of Russia noted coldly.

"They are." Andreyev conceded, feeling the air conditioning of the King Spider command vehicle wash over his face like snow spray. "I make none beyond those I have made since the opening of this campaign. Where is the air support I need? Where are the reinforcements? How is it that so few of my supplies reach my men? I do not say I cannot bring victory sirs, but I do say that without these resources victory will be much harder to obtain and much farther away."

"Our air superiority at night is almost totally surrendered." The General of frontline counter air said sheepishly. "European fighter planes are able to engage our planes almost eighty miles away, and there is no countermeasure for that beyond evasive maneuvering. If we cannot find a countermeasure for that weapon, I'm afraid that our night flying will be completely lost. This advantage is obviously being exploited, night raids have increased drastically and convoys moving at night are being hit constantly, and almost two hundred kilometers behind the front."

"We will need a tighter air defense." General Isotov noted.

"I am working on that." General Counter Air said. "If you can get me more SAM units, I can deploy them in much wider areas and cut off strike lanes that European fighters typically take. It'll at least burn up their fuel and increase transit time, and maybe allow a few more supply convoys to slip through."

"And if I can get those supplies, my men need ammunition fuel and weapons, I can give you your damn breakthrough." Andreyev said and snapped his fingers to sell the point to his superior.

"Agreed." Izotov said. "you will have your counter air resources general. Colonel, you will give me my breakthrough, our brothers in the East will have to deal with a few shortages of supplies, but the war goes well there as well."

"Sir." The other generals exited the conference, Andreyev flipped the switch to disconnect on his but found that he did not disconnect.

"A moment Andreyev," Izotov said. Andreyev sat a little straighter in his seat. "our STAR systems have noted an orbital laser platform moving into position over your battle site." Andreyev stiffened, if the Europeans were willing to employ _that_ weapon, all of his gains would be lost in the blink of an eye. Izotov chuckled at the sudden change in Andreyev's disposition.

"you understand the precariousness of your position then." Izotov said. Andreyev nodded.

"Do we have ASAT weapons in position to destroy it?"

"two, certainly not enough to destroy such a weapon." Izotov shook his head. "Those were moving to destroy their communications and GPS sats around the area. We were able to overwhelm their eastern orbital lasers with targets, but we do not have the missiles to waste in this theater at the moment, almost all of them are either North, aiding our naval forces or West dealing with the Americans."

Izotov paused and took a breath. "We are releasing a hydrogen two stage FAE missile to your discretion." Andreyev nodded. The FAE was fired off of a portable launcher and had the explosive power of a tactical nuclear weapon, without the radiation to appease the environmentalists. It was a last resort weapon.

"Let us be clear Colonel," Izotov leaned forward and his voice became much darker. "You are to only use this if you feel victory cannot be guaranteed to you. You are not to use it, unless the Europeans fire their Laser first, is that understood?"

"Perhaps if I were able to shoot first, sir, I could save my me-"

"_Is that understood colonel?"_ the War minister repeated.

"yes sir."

INC Hamas was redlining its diesel reactors, GENINF had sent flash messages to all of its units at sea and ordered them to withdraw and defend the shoreline. Gregorich, spent the six hour long trip back, sleeping. He was tired, his crew was tired, and his engineers had astoundingly managed to keep a hundred and ten percent power output from the engines, and the secondary teams were busy refitting their weapons and making minute adjustments.

"_Captain to the bridge, Captain to the bridge."_ Blared over the intercom, waking Gregorich from his sleep. He checked the time, 1340, and jogged up the stairwell to the bridge and ordered a report.

"We cut the reactors and idled at thirty percent capacity to keep them from redlining." The Officer of the watch reported. "We were able to keep a base speed of fifteen knots and we're entering the designated combat site now."

"Weapons systems?" the Executive officer arrived just behind Gregorich and was busy straightening his uniform.

"We're a little low on countermeasures and missiles," PWO reported after a short conversation with his team, "there's a mechanical problem with the port three inch gun, its having problems traversing but still operational."

"Electronics are fully functional." EWO reported.

"Sonar is vertical." The ASWO nodded.

"Radar contact!" the radar techie shouted. "Incoming bogeys, designating raid one! Looks like two helicopter type craft at one eight zero!"

"Condition alpha." Gregorich nodded to his XO.

"_General quarters, all hands to action stations, set condition alpha throughout the ship, repeat set condition alpha throughout the ship."_ The bell rang sending his men racing to action stations once again.

"All decks report ready." The XO said after a moments consultation.

"All ahead two thirds, make your heading one five zero-"

"Vampire vampire! Vampires tracking one eight zero four incoming missiles-

"all ahead flank, orient to directed threat weapons free." Gregorich snapped his fingers at the weapons team without breaking his eyes off of the fore viewports. The starboard three inch cannon began burping its first rounds out, the bridge shook with each shot fired. The XO shouted something and a countermeasure canister was fired upward. Gregorich could see puffs of smoke explode in the distance, then two bright flashes as the first pair of missiles were destroyed.

"Two down, but the other two are coming in fast!" the PWO shouted. "looks like its going to be close!"

"Brace brace brace!" the XO shouted into the intercom and Gregorich instinctively braced himself against one of the computer consoles. The roar of a pair of missiles was followed by a splash and a massive shriek and tearing of metal. INC Hamas shook and Gregorich was thrown from his position and banged his head hard against one of the bridge crew.

Gregorich stumbled up dazed shaking his head. The XO was already on top of things and talking in very loud yet inaudible tones with one of the engineer chiefs on the intercom. Gregorich took the time to discover his head hurt a lot, and when he wiped his sleeve on it, he found there was blood. The XO hung the intercom phone up.

"Aft took a hit from a dud missile." The XO said loudly. "just skimmed the deck and took the portside anchor with it. One man injured, badly."

"Thank God." Gregorich managed. The Egyptian navy was supposed to use the Exocet Antiship missile, and a hit to the aft by a live one would have been more than enough to blow the little Israeli corvette out of the water.

"Bogeys are running!" the radar officer shouted as he got back into his seat,

"Sir! Flash message from HQ!" the EWO tore the strip of paper off of the hotprinter and handed it to the captain. Gregorich wiped more blood on his sleeve and scanned the terse order.

SEARCH AND DESTROY ALL FOREIGN SURFACE VESSELS IN ISRAELI WATERS X THIS IS TO BE UNDERSTOOD AS A GENERAL WEAPONS FREE X

"Friendly air overhead sir." The radar man reported from his station.

"Sir, I've got an authority message from INF ACTUAL." The radioman pressed his headphones closer to make sure he got the message. "Strike coordinates for the enemy carrier are at—" he rattled off the long coordinate string.

Gregorich shook his head. This was happening almost too fast for him to handle. Orders however, were orders.

"Flank speed to the designated coordinates." Gregorich managed. "My intention…is to engage the enemy first with Ship to ship missiles, then torpedoes. Take the conn XO."

"Aye sir!" the XO responded. Gregorich rubbed his temples. This war was something else, something he had never imagined. He understood that it was ferocious, like all war was, but he had never expected it to be so furious as to be physically draining. He wasn't thinking quickly, even after a long rest.

Gregorich hoped he would be sharp enough to take on a heavily defended carrier when the time came.


	14. Waterloo

The noise and heavy beat of the music was rudely interrupted by a chatter of automatic fire followed by the sound of several men trying to voice orders above the music. Dolan shut the door.

"Shit, what do we do?" she turned and saw Clark already checking his spare magazines.

"Try to sneak out; if we can't we fight our way out."

"Ever done this sort of thing before?" Stuart asked.

"Once in Iran." Clark said and paused for a moment. "It didn't blow over nicely."

"Glad to know we have a veteran here." Stuart snapped a G19 automatic together and charged the weapon. Clark conversed in hushed tones to Peled who then quickly opened one of the bedroom drawers and revealed a few blocks of plastic explosives. Dolan peeked out the doors and saw the clubgoers hustling out of the room while the soldiers fanned out.

"Do they know we're here?" Dolan asked, and Clark came over and took a look as well.

"Looks like it."

"How?"

"Maybe our friend here had someone from the government tailing him. We should have checked for that." Clark admitted. "I'm getting too old for this."

"Done here." Peled said and Dolan noticed he had wired explosives around the door frame and attached the primachord to a cell phone.

"Alright people, nice and slow; Peled stick close to me. We pretend we're drunk, if that doesn't blow over we hug the walls, got it? Don't shoot until I give the signal." Clark said and took a deep breath.

"What's the signal?" Stuart asked.

"You'll know." Clark said and stumbled out the door. Dolan was third out and raised a laugh, hopefully it sounded as drunk as possible. She leaned heavily on Peled feeling the palm gun brush against her breast as she did so. One of the soldiers shouted something at them and raised a rifle.

"Woah woah!" Clark said chuckling a little. "Easy shir! No need for that here!"

"Amerikane?" the soldier cocked his head but didn't lower his rifle.

"Yeshir!" Clark managed another laugh and took two steps toward him but stumbled.

"come here!" the soldier shouted, and in the low light, Dolan managed to spot some sort of rank insignia on his uniform. Dolan laughed all the harder and fended off a pretend grope by Peled. If it came down to a firefight, it wouldn't be good. They were in a confined area with low caliber weapons and they were outgunned and outnumbered. Their best equipment was all back at "base", although a pair of Micro TAR-21s were in the back of the van used to drive here. They might as well have been back in Israel for what good they would do now. Clark meanwhile stumbled forward again and leaned heavily on the Turkish soldier. "I'm sorry man-" two shots rang out and Peled immediately straightened up while Dolan dived for the nearest piece of solid cover, the bar. She drew her palm gun and heard the sound of an explosion as Peled thumbed a button on his cell phone, blowing the room that they had just occupied to splinters. The soldiers reacted immediately, turning towards the sound of the explosion, leaving their aim off the Israelis for just a few moments. Dolan sighted up and double tapped the trigger, stroking it as she'd been trained to do at Quantico.

One dropped, with a pair of shots drilled neatly behind the man's ear. Then the club burst into a hailstorm of rounds as both sides began trading fire. Dolan could only presently describe it as a mass of confusion, dark shapes that ran from cover to cover lighting up the dark room with muzzleflashes that clashed spectacularly with the disco lasers and strobe lights. She saw a rifle slide toward her and Peled nodded as he reloaded his own captured rifle and began shooting. The rifle was an European issued Famas. So the Europeans liked funding the Turkish government did they? Dolan popped up and fired at one of the dark shapes. A grenade went off and suddenly she managed to hear Clark shouting "Back! Back!"

Back where? Dolan turned and she made out Clark's big shape sprinting for the exit with Stuart in tow who took cover behind a chair and sprayed fire. Peled and Dolan ran together, eventually sliding out the door and ruining her dress in the process. Clark was the last one out, a pair of grenades bowled backhanded through the door to discourage a chase. A van streaked to a halt and Stuart slammed the door open.

"Come on!" Zilich shouted from the drivers seat and the team leaped into it. Dolan found she was sweating all over and shaking as well. "Chavez and Johnston just checked in, they got the message to the Director."

"So we are mission accomplished." Clark said.

"As long as we get out alive."

"Mortar rounds, incoming!" someone shouted over the screeching sound of 40mm shells smashing into the street. Sopot ducked under the barricade; this was a nightmare, the battle of Hanburg had turned into a running street battle, with Sopot and his Commandos trading fire with Russian infantry street by street, building by building, room by room. His troops were excellently trained and extremely well disciplined but the battle was taking their toll. He only had sixty of his original proud hundred left.

The Colonel in charge had ordered them to pull back slowly, sowing mines where they went (the new Spider leaping mines that could plug in holes in the field. Sopot had lead his platoon back to the Tango uplink site and were now bunkered up with a Tank squadron, an understrength regiment of infantry, and a dozen Archer combat drones with TOW missiles alongside its light machine gun. The engineers inside the Uplink site were commanding the Combat drones and hopefully they knew enough combat tactics to support the troops rather than hinder them…

"Tangos in the open!" Another shouted and Sopot peeked over, he could see a squadron of Ogres charging over the rubble of a building they had just blown through (collateral damage apparently meant nothing to Russians) followed by Russian infantry. They were bottlenecked there, and open to all the guns of the defenders who let into them with gusto.

"Incoming!" another shouted and pointed upward, following the dark shape of an SU-47 Slamhound nosing down for a vertical attack. Sopot dropped flat and soon heard a massive explosion engulf what probably was the Panther tanks. The heatwave washed over Sopots back as the Slamhound kicked upward to break out of its dive-

Sopot looked up to see its wingtip clip the top of the uplink center which spun the fighter and sent it slamming into the side of an apartment building to continue out the otherside and destroy another.

"Lancer, this is Epee." Sopot gasped into the microphone. "We're getting massacred out here, we can't hold! Say again we can't hold!"

"Hold tight, Epee, Cavalry's on the way." The radioman on the other side of the city responded. "Emerald and Diamond attack squadrons are enroute, designate targets with infrared strobes and lasers."

Sopot copied an affirmative and barked the orders as loudly as he could to his troops. Red tracers kicked out towards the European positions which were well covered and slightly elevated. Dark shapes of infantry huddled behind the burning hulks of tanks as the second wave of Ogres drove through the gap, its guns belching flame to knock out the Archer drones. Wire guided missiles licked out from the European positions and burst on the Ogre's refractive coating. A few managing to strike the depleted uranium armor that made the outer hull of a T-100.

The Archer combat drones were wheeling about in some sort of defensive pattern that eluded Sopot's memory but were quickly targeted and killed by missiles and armor piercing rounds. His HUD began lighting up the Infrared lasers that his men were activating to illuminate targets. He fired a strobe grenade from his launcher and flipped the laser-

The gunships flocked in, spearheaded by a volley of missiles which exploded on the forward Russian positions and gutting three tanks, and they subsequently were ripped into by 20mm chain guns as the nimble cheetahs flitted between the avenues at low altitude.

Sopot popped up and sprayed fire at a squad of Russians who were now scrambling for the closest building and solid cover…

The gunships were a nuisance. They'd been off of Andreyev's radar tracks by flying between the streets until the very last second. He sent orders for a Cockroach IFV group with his own Spetsnaz Wolf infantry embarked to counter the latest threat. The Cockroaches had heavy 40mm AA flak cannons and numerous firing ports for his men to shoot out. It would be as easy for them as shooting ducks with the same weapons. At such close range, the IFVs would barely have to aim and helicopters (aside from the Russian ones) were notoriously lightly armored.

His second attack had demo charges in place on the other building which would be collapsing soon. The Captain in charge had ordered a suppressive barrage of handheld mortar fire which managed to keep the Europeans bottled up and not counter attacking, but not much else. They held their position fiercely and gave ground stubbornly, that Uplink site held the key to the entire battle. If Andreyev's riflemen could slice into the computer codes they'd have control of all its Satellite and GPS imaging systems in the entire sector, and invaluable intel for a long duration of the war.

The Europeans were now swinging everything to bear on this, his Slamhound overflights were picking up numerous tank squadrons heading to that Uplink, while they managed to hold everywhere else.

How many troops were pouring into this insignificant little place now? He checked the data with a flick of his eyes, over ten _thousand_ had been committed to the battlezone on the Russians side alone. And it was mostly infantry, the city streets proved too hindering for the Russians to use their armored strength. His Zhukov SPHA vehicles were having trouble finding decent firing solutions that would land artillery shells perfectly between the tightly packed buildings, but they could still be used. Air dominance over the battlefield was slowly becoming more and more contested as both sides air forces came into full swing and planes fell from the sky like leaves in autumn.

His Anti Air flak units were coming into place now, and had shredded an entire squadron of gunships, clearing the way for his rear echelon to launch UCAV low altitude flights equipped with air to air weapons. Swarms of UAV drones were now entering on the Russians side and beginning to hunt for Cheetah groups with singleminded efficiency…

The General running the entire battle from his Command vehicle (Sun King) suddenly saw his gunship groups become swatted out of the sky as new Russian units began entering the battlezone, UCAVs were slow but deadly efficient in an air to air role and the Russians made good ones. With air coverage denied to his troops, the Russians began their own helicopter counterattack KA-65 howlers swooped in all over the lines and began peppering columns of European reinforcements and Russian tanks steamrolled his forward positions so that his lines began crumbling. The Russians were strong everywhere, his weapons seemed ineffective against them. He had one weapon left.

"Signal to all forces." He said darkly to his radiomen. "Waterloo." His men stiffened, then set about to their orders.

"Received code sir!" One of the technicians ran from his station and handed a slip of paper to CINC SPACE/CYBER.

WATERLOO

That was it then. CINC SPACE/CYBER checked the orbital GPS realtime image and didn't like what he saw when he matched it with the Force tracker. The European units were holding on it seemed by the skin of their teeth and with the Waterloo signal, the rear units had begun to break and fall back. General Mondrian in charge down there had a second wave of reinforcements standing by now, waiting for a certain Judgement from the Heavens. CINCSPACE/CYBER had followed every procedure to be sure this wouldn't mar his record and made the call to the Rammstein Satellite Uplink center.

The General in charge of the Rammstein Uplink confirmed the order and shouted orders for his men to begin THEL (Tactical High Energy Laser) warm-ups. The twenty men inside the Uplink center punched in their codes to begin generator spooling (only the second live firing they had ever performed) and targeting procedures. The maximum amount of damage called for a twenty second burst which would ionize most of the Eastern block of Hanburg.

In spatial terms, it required precision burns at such miniscule numbers that the Rammstein center's computer systems were not equipped to handle them and therefore were reliant on tight coordination between the teams operating the imaging systems, the team monitoring laser heat output, and the tracking team which would be the ones calculating by "eye" when the THEL would be fired and cut

The orbital laser platforms were never designed to strike ground targets, rather they were tasked with destroying ICBMs in midflight; it was only at the beginning of the war that the crews began training in ground strike missions. The weapon in particular was only designed for a burst of less than a second which would be more than enough to destroy a 3 stage ICBM. For a ground attack of this magnitude, the generator would need close monitoring.

There was, however no time to practice and the teams set about.

"Firing solution." The officer in charge of targeting shouted from his station.

"_Achtung; _Last check." The general said.

"Engineering – check."

"Maneuvering – check."

"Tactical – check."

"_Fire_."

Orbital laser platform number twelve oriented one last time and fired; its laser (the "width" of a naval destroyer) lanced from the sky, boiled every cloud within ten kilometers of its strike point and struck the Eastern block at the head of the Russian advance. Its orbital burn began to change its trajectory and the laser moved at a surface rate of eighty KMPH glassing the ground it crossed over (and within two kilometers from the strike). The heat was so tremendous that it boiled through concrete walls, liquefied steel, and ionized the men unfortunate enough to be caught in the blast.

The THEL slashed across Hanburg from North to South, plowing a flat furrow through the buildings, lights, machines and men that occupied its section. The unfortunate souls who were caught staring or looking up in the direction of the blast were instantly blinded, the ones closer had their eyes liquefied or HUD visors melted permanently to their faces. The instant heating of the laser set off ammunition dumps, cooked off rounds inside their barrels and even caused full magazines that were not loaded explode. The casualties on the Russian side were horrendous.

Andreyev lost units in the Northern Block so quickly that he didn't understand what was happening until he heard the artillery commander he was currently speaking with via crosscom suddenly broke into screams about his eyes. When his forward units began winking out (My God! So many!) he understood what was happening and quickly commanded his two ASAT rockets to be fired. Hopefully, the THEL would be overheated and not be able to track and destroy the two incoming missiles.

"General?" the phone rang back at CINC NORAD's suburban home. He rolled over and groaned waking his wife who irritably tossed a pillow at him. He glanced at the clock through sleepy eyes. Four thirty in the fucking morning!

"You have any idea what time it is?" he growled into the wireless phone.

"Apologies sir, but we have satellite reports of a Tactical High Energy Laser fired over Eastern Europe just a few moments ago. American Eagle is requesting a meeting in half an hour."

"Fine." CINC NORAD grumbled and hung up.

"What is it?" his wife asked incredulously but not too incredulously, she was used to such things and unfortunately it came with the job.

"Trouble." CINC NORAD lied. The President Becerra "American Eagle" (which NORAD found was ironic because Becerra was Hispanic and born of migrant farm workers) probably was panicking because the Europeans had fired off a laser for reasons the US couldn't exactly see right now (beyond the few stealth COMIT sats that were probably orienting to get a peek) and would ask NORADs opinion on the current DEFCON. In other words, it was just another boring meeting where NORAD would tell the president that it was nothing to be worried about and he'd fall asleep in Cheyenne mountain until he was on duty so he could be fresh when they ran the KinWep tests. It was a bad way to start a monotonous day.

"Raider Raider! Incoming ASAT missiles, two of them!" a technician on the imaging team shouted and rattled off the coordinates.

"Reorient and fire on designated threats." The general of the Ramstein Uplink said.

"Executing targeting burn _now!"_ the mauevering crew scrambled to maneuver the weapon to fire again.

"Overheat sir!" the captain in charge of the engineering section shouted. "Generator overheat!"

"Is there any way to spool up the weapon?" the General called.

"I can try pulling removing the reactor safeties and that might-

"Do it!" this was _his_ weapon they were trying to kill and he would be damned if they did it.

"Weaponized! We have enough energy for a half second weapons burst at short range without meltdown." the captain of engineering shouted from his station and he gave the General a thumbs up. The General snapped his fingers and pointed at the Tactical officer who gave orders for his men to track the incoming missiles and fire.

The number twelve THEL spun quickly to direct itself at the first missile and fire and it did so magnificently, spitting the incoming at a range of 600 miles and detonating its fuel cells midflight so as to engulf the entire missile. The second one closed at Mach 9 releasing its second stage boosters and firing its third stage rockets on its kill trajectory. The THEL fired again missing it by a scant mile and boiling away part of the outer casing but the ASAT continued on its course. The maneuvering team immediately hit its emergency retros and sent the orbital laser platform out of the trajectory so quickly that the ASAT rocket couldn't maneuver to keep up. The missile continued spaceward into the black while the Rammstein Uplink crew attempted to keep their satellite in orbit.


	15. Covenant

Once back at their home base, Clark made sure to switch on the CIA electronic infiltrator blocker before logging onto his untraceable email and sending it to the dead drop site. Dolan gave Clark the encryption code for the email and the report was sent quickly.

TO: .IN

ENCRYPTION FEED: ******

DECRYPTION FEED: ****

PLI network has been traced to European Federation defense ministry with the motive of aiding fights against Israel in turn for Arabic countries to aid the Federation in the fight against Russia. LOCATION OF TWO STAGE NUCLEAR SILOS IN IRAN HAVE BEEN GIVEN TO PLI FORCES ALONG WITH LAUNCH CODES AND KEYS. SILOS LOCATED MAP GRID SIERRA TWO TWO SEVEN ZERO BY ECHO FOUR TWO SEVENTEEN.

We have been unable to confirm any repeat any intelligence on the defense of the site, whether the rockets are servicible, if there are personnel trained to shoot such weapons or if there are any defenses around. It is in Israel's best interest of self preservation that these silos be LOCATED AND DESTROYED AT ALL COSTS.

Avi Ben Jakob hadn't slept all night, the war in Tel Aviv had reached a fever pitch with cut off Egyptian infantry and tanks fighting standing battles against the IDF, the flashes of gunfire out at sea as Naval ships played their deadly games in the dark and fighters screeched overhead. As director of Mossad intelligence and Special forces he'd unleashed his men into the streets of Tel Aviv where they were raising all nine hells against the invading force.

His cellphone beeped at him with the arrival of an email. Avi Ben Jakob checked the secure link before opening the file, noting that whoever had contacted him via that exclusive dead drop site would have something important to say. Jakob scanned the message and accessed some very secure files on his laptop. So PLI terrorists had finally gotten access to nuclear missiles? Jakob scanned the file on an operation called COVENANT.

COVENANT was laid down in 2010 when Israel had been worried about Iran's nuclear capabilities and called for first strikes against strategic nuclear targets. It called for a massive air raid into Iranian airspace in which Israeli strike planes would eliminate nuclear power plants and silos with GBU-12 bunkerbusters, the American type. COVENANT was never put into effect and Iran had wiped out most of Saudi Arabia because of it.

Things were different now, Saudi Arabia had agreed to grant Israeli planes limited access to their airfields for that operation (A flight span of 2000 kilometers required an extra tank up.) but with Saudi wiped off the map save for the small tribes in the southwestern region, that plan was nil. There also was a problem of not having the GBU-12 bombs, seeing as how so many were used to strike targets in Turkey, Egypt and Lebanon. It would have to be a special forces raid. Jakob decided and contacted his comrade GENIAF for consultance.

Avi Ben Jakob, as director of Mossad had wide discretionary powers that could actually be put into effect in certain cases without Parliamentary approval. He would have to put COVENANT into effect immediately. He didn't want to give the PLI time to learn how to shoot those missiles, if there were any.

"It'll be difficult, but it can be done." GENIAF admitted after a moment of thought.

"I was concerned with C-130 tanker capability, our strike planes might not have the range to enter Iranian airspace." Jakob said.

"We can call the Jordanians and see what air assets they have so they might aid us. But our fighters have practiced with the US Navy "Buddy tank" system for some time now, allowing fighters to carry the fuel to keep other fighters in the air. If we had enough planes up, we should be able to reach into Iranian airspace."

"How many planes?"

"At least four hundred fighter planes." GENIAF said with no amount of relish. No general would want to waste his resources like that but it couldn't be helped.

"Four hundred? The original plans called for only seventy; surely it would be closer to a hundred and forty fighters?"

"No, we are in the middle of a war my friend." GENIAF shook his head severely. "Lebanon and Syria will surely launch fighters to intercept. If I saw my enemy sending huge amounts of air assets off in a direction I don't know, I will at least launch assets to hit them on the return leg. That means having other fighters running interference and keeping the flight lanes clear."

"Do we have the resources to spare?"

"We'll be at a strategic low on fuel, we might have to tap into the ground reserves and synthesize them if we want future air coverage but if the threat you say is true, then we won't have much choice." GENIAF said coldly. "Iran's remaining assets in that area are small, they have three airfields with eight fighters each closer to the Pakistani border. They shouldn't give you too much problems. How do you expect to deploy your troops?"

"Paradrop if I can manage it. And helicopters on the return leg, preferably Jordanian because the distance is shorter."

"How many of your men will be commited?"

"Enough of them . We don't have much choice."

"Incoming bogeys at zero nine zero, two helicopters; targets in range-"

"Shoot for effect!" the XO snapped and the portside flak of INC Hamas unleashed its fury at the distant Egyptian seahawks. The war for Israel's coast had reached a fever pitch, fighter planes furballed overhead while the Israeli navy scattered and engaged its Egyptian counterpart in what resembled more of a bar brawl than a battle of disciplined navies.

"When will we be in range of Tango one?" Gregorich mopped more sweat off his brow. He'd been directing his ship in a series of sprints and turns as he tried to close with the Egyptian MAU carrier, harassed all the way by helicopters and other ships. The air force had dealt with most of them thank God.

"Should be seven kilometers out now sir, take a look." The RIO said. Gregorich snapped his binoculars out the fore viewports and let the XO direct the ship a little longer. He managed to spot a grey block floating out in the ocean. That'd be it.

"Helm all ahead flank, make your heading two one zero, right full rudder."

"Make my heading two one zero aye sir!"

"Officers take note, my intention is to close to five kilometers and torpedo range with contact Tango one and destroy it with Mk48 ADCAP torpedoes."

"Captain we still have SSMs." The XO reminded him. Damn Gregorich was becoming slow. He shouldn't have been forgetting this.

"You're right. Set firing solutions for our surface skimmers."

"PWO set the shot one by one." The XO barked.

"One by one aye sir! Fire sequence one through eight set."

"Incoming!" the RIO shouted from his station, "_brace brace brace!"_

The shrieking rounds overhead told Gregorich that the carrier had at least one five inch gun pointed at them. Of course the enemy would have a weapon Gregorich couldn't deflect. He ordered a rapid change in course, which unfortunately through off the firing solution but he had no choice, he had to evade those missiles. The PWO worked rapidly and finally had them.

"Shoot on generated bearings!" Gregorich snapped.

"Firing one by one sir!" the PWO shouted over the roar of Hamas's missiles rapidly leaving the launcher. "Readying torpedos!" a cloud of grey smoke billowed over the viewports obscuring anything from view, but another shriek followed a splash, spray flecked onto the viewports letting Gregorich realize those rounds were falling _damn close_.

"Vampire vampire!" the RIO shouted with alarm. "Incoming missiles on axis one eight zero-"

"Belay vampire, that's counter missile!" the PWO shouted angrily. Gregorich took two quick strides over to the radar station where his own missiles were traced with blue. Three had already been blotted out, and even as he looked another one was destroyed by a countermissile. Four missiles left. Then three closed after the guidance package of one malfunctioned and tumbled into the sea. At a range of eight hundred meters the point defense gatling system engaged its targets exploding two missile in quick succession but not stopping the third. The sea skimmer missile plowed right into the hull, penetrating through the toughened carrier hide and exploding inside the compartments.

"hit!" the PWO slammed his fist onto the computer.

"but not a kill." The XO nodded. "Firing solution on the torpedoes?"

"Ten seconds." PWO promised. All Gregorich could do now was wait while his crew worked. The shrieking sound of 5 inch rounds continued to fall around him, but finally the ship shook as there was a massive rent and screech of metal followed by an explosion. Gregorich fell, banging his head against the wheel of the ship before hitting the ground.

The XO was up on his feet first, scrambling toward the intercom to listen to the frantic reports of the Engineering chief. The XO pressed a button and a bell rang throughout the ship before he lifted the phone to his mouth.

"Fire in the engine room, fire in the engine room." He shut the phone back to its place and turned to Gregorich who was just rising. "zero maneuverability sir. They've slashed our engines."

"Firing solution!" the PWO shouted and raised his thumb to depress the button but Gregorich for some reason couldn't stop thinking about how his _ship_ was on fire. How could he let that happen? Those were _his_ boys down there dying and here he was…

"Sir!" the XO shouted as the bell continued to ring. Gregorich held his head in his hands. XO Jama knew he had to take command right then and there.

"Shut down the engines! PWO, give them a spread! _Shoot on generated bearings!_"

The PWO shouted his response as he ran his thumb across the six switches that were connected to the rocket fired torpedo tubes that had been aimed to starboard. Six rocket boosted ADCAPs were jettisoned into the water where they initiated a straight search pattern until reaching a preprogrammed destination of 5 kilometers. Upon hitting that destination they switched to active and homed onto the massive ping return signal of the MAU. Two torpedoes homing signatures became confused and began to circle aimlessly, three struck the ship toward the fore end, unable to turn quickly enough to strike for maximum damage. Those three detonated under the water, the shaped explosive charge sending the shockwave upward to break the "spine" of the ship and the fore end crumpled under the impact.

The final torpedo detonated amidships, dead center. The force of the shockwave sent a tremor throughout the flat top and ruptured the supposedly secure 500 pound welded bolts and let water into the vital compartments. Fire control parties raced to the area to try to stem the flooding. Enough water got in however, to enter the engine rooms. By logic, water did not mix well with diesel electric plants and the plants that turned the turbines which turned the propellers suddenly malfunctioned and shut down.

"She's dead in the water!" The RIO shouted.

"But so are we…" Jama whispered, looking to his captain for help. Gregorich held his head in his hands and had sat down on the seat a petty officer had thoughtfully vacated. It didn't' happen often but the INF trained enough for the eventuality. Two rounds landing close by making Gregorich cringe.

"Friendly air incoming…" the RIO yelled but was drowned out by the streaking sound of two fighters passing low overhead. The bridge shook as the two F-15 strike planes tumbled to the left after loosing a pair of missiles that struck the carrier low amidships allowing more water to slip in. The resulting fireball let loose a strangled cheer from the crew.

"that had to cook off an ammunition magazine." Jama smiled and patted the PWO on his back. "good shooting son!"

Captain Jared Gregorich continued to stare blankly into the palms of his hands that were pressed flat against his eyes.


	16. R&R & prep

"Morning sir!" the MP saluted to CINC-NORAD at the entrance to Cheyene mountain.

"Morning lieutenant." CINC-NORAD nodded in response, feeling foolish that he didn't know the kids name. It was the same guard that stood there every morning. CINC-NORAD, unlike most generals, drove himself to work. He let so many things be done for him, it was such a small pleasure now to drive to work every day like a normal citizen.

President Becerra had not at all been happy with the activation of a European orbital THEL along their eastern front. Of course CINC-NORAD had been woken up at the crack of dawn to hold a video conference with him and the chiefs of staff (who were three hours ahead in DC and as perky as they could be). A two hour long meaningless debate about what that could mean (what it meant in CINC-NORAD's opinion was that the Euros were getting their asses handed to them) and eventually culminated in the decision that the ASU-196 stealth satellite should be moved into position to monitor the Eastern front of the war.

ASU-196 was one of two US satellites in the world with stealth capability. It was small, it had very few retros and very little fuel and borrowed the same stealth concepts pioneered by the F-22, all perfectly angled (both planetward and spaceward) and coated with a mix of radar absorbent and solar absorbent material made it nearly impossible to see on the ground and impossible to detect from orbit. The imaging equipment on it however, was primitive by the days standards. It used a white hot-thermal imaging that could only discern large troop movements and thermal blooms of factory plants or missile launches. It was adequate for its job profile which was discrete imaging of targets (in NORAD, it was backhandedly known as the "pedofile") and after the meeting, a very grumpy CINC-NORAD had made the call for the eastern seaboard team to deploy the satellite over the Agean Sea because "American Eagle" wanted to keep an eye on their Israeli allies as well.

"Is everything right for the world?" CINC-NORAD barked as he strode into the Ops Center and tossed his coat onto an open chair.

"Nothings right with the world!" the young folk responded.

"Okay people, you know the drill, at 2100 today we will be conducting anti missile drills along the eastern seaboard."

"Yes sir!" the Ops crew responded as one.

"carry on!" CINC NORAD checked the email for more details one last time. Becerra was worried that the Europeans might get desperate and deploy subs to launch ballistic nuclear tipped missiles across the eastern seaboard. Not if NORAD was here to defend them of course. He'd be throwing his team lots of curveballs today, starting with possibly a scattered launch where the KinWeps platforms had to engage several targets at once, possibly an overwhelming strike, an EMP burst that might knock out the satellites…

It was an affair that was designed to be grueling. CINCNORAD would make sure it was grueling, it was the only exciting thing that happened around here.

"We have them on the run!" the two star in charge of 103rd mechanized said with a careful amount of glee in his voice. General Bankole nodded and hid the smile behind his stoic demeanour.

"Good work. Cleanse the Russians from our land General."

"With pleasure sir." The general nodded and winked out of the display.

Bankole brought up the map of the eastern front. Everything had swung in Europe's favor overnight, a massive air raid in the North had forced the Russians to deploy more air assets there and deny them to Hanburg where what was left of the Polish pilots were wreaking havoc on Russian supply dumps and air assets.

Hanburg itself was divided in two by a long line of glass but even now the enemy were being pushed back and the satellite Uplinks were being secured. The computer virus's had been removed so as to allow the crews of the sat uplinks to work at their peak efficiency. The Russians were on the run.

Andreyev, at times, looked back to his days as a boy hunting wolves on the harsh wastes of Siberia. His grandfather had been a sniper in the Great Patriotic war and had taught Andreyev his craft well.

"Wolves are hunters." He had whispered in the cold darkness as the pair waited in the forest. "You do not hunt them, you let yourself be hunted."

It had made such little sense at the time, the young Sasha had thought the old man had lost his wits. But on that day, he had learned an important lesson. Grandfather had taken his Mosin Nagat sniper, a weapon that he had killed many germans with, leaving the young Andreyev to tend to the fire and dinner. Grandfather had shot an elk earlier and had done the gutting and cleaning himself and the smells carried into the forest.

A wolf pack had tracked the smells to the camp and ringed Andreyev around a tree…

A shot rang out felling one of the wolves. The pack scrambled away as Grandfather appeared from the darkness, his face rubbed with soot to blur his outline.

"Always know boy, that when you are hunted, you can always become a more dangerous hunter with the right bait." Andreyev learned that lesson well.

Granted he never trusted his Grandfather to take him camping ever again, but he had learned it well.

General Izotov had sent him a terse flash message from Moscow

CONGRATULATIONS GENERAL ANDREYEV, LEADER OF THE 24TH MOTORIFLE SPETSNAZ GUARD BRIGADE.

It was a few moments to understand that he had been promoted. He also understood suddenly, that he was being given full release to use his Hydrogen FAE missile. The European counter attack was fierce, pushing his forward units out of the city and back to the outskirts, so Andreyev had directed his reserve units to pull back and told his frontline units to hold position and prepare to counterattack. The operation he had in mind would be complex and he conversed quickly with his comrade in the air force to prepare.

"If this attack is to work, we will need to ensure that the Europeans can't recover from the hit. That means air superiority and lots of it. This operation is of the utmost importance for the _Rodina_, we must have victory."

"How much do you require?" the General of the 26th close air regiment did not forget that the Spetsnaz were still under direct control of the SVU intelligence service and their _zampolit_.

"All of it."

It was something different for once. They were _advancing_. And they weren't running to do it, that was something. Sopot had never felt so elated in the war. He grabbed a hot meal, the Bratwurst in Hanburg was excellent and a few citizens here still did things the old traditional way, butchering pigs and taking the meat out to smoke in their huts before cooking and serving them with saurkraut and a pint.

Sopot hadn't had a pint in weeks and the fiery German beer was almost as good as Polish Vodka. The bratwurst wasn't a kielbasa but it was good nonetheless. Poland, Sopot's home would be retaken in a matter of weeks. If they were long, good, if they were hard excellent; he'd kill more Russians then.

His platoon stood easy along a destroyed street marked with craters and rubble from falling mortar fire. They teased the engineers who were busy repaving them and couldn't stop for a drink because their superior officer was watching.

"Captain." Sopot turned to see the Portugeause Lieutenant in charge of Fourth squad walk up to him and hand him a sheet of paper. Sopot drained his pint before reading it slowly.

"We have a few hours." Sopot said and handed back the mobilization orders. Yes it felt good to be advancing, and he and his men deserved respite from all the battles.

But he couldn't return home, not yet. Home would soon become a battlefield again, and he wondered what had become of his girlfriend. He hadn't thought about her in weeks and felt guilty because of it. He walked into one of the still servicible internet café's and checked his email for the first time and saw all the unread messages. They were filled with love and gave Sopot more hope. She had gotten away safely and was in the refugee camps by Rammstein. Sopot hoped he could see her soon.

Before he logged off he shot off an email to his superiors explaining that he and his men needed rest. His casualties had been light and the six men out of the 100 commando platoon would be sorely missed, but they were remembered here by the smiling faces and cheery swigs as all Europeans here reveled in the bitter German drink.

"We have them." The SVU lieutenant sighed as she approached the final set of firewalls.

"they surely can't shut us out now, even if they begin an active defense." She said.

"good." The colonel in charge of the electronics suite rubbed her shoulders. "I will tell the general that we can begin a Post crash of the Hanburg Uplinks. How long will that be?"

"A few hours at most. Six I would estimate." The girl shrugged and mopped her brow.

"Go out for a short break Comrade." The Russian colonel said, "all of you, go. No vodka yet, we need to be sharp."

"_Ramps in thirty_" the radio call came out, and a few of the Mossad SF operatives checked their kit one last time.

"We'll be going in fast." The Captain in charge of the operations said. "And with chemical warfare gear. The area around the silo's is still irradiated so I want everyone to stay in their suits and keep with minimal exposure. I don't like sleeping with night lights in the barracks."

That brought a round chuckle. Issad raised his hand.

"Sir, is it possible that we do not wear them? These suits will hamper our movement and we've never accessed the layouts of the area before, we've never done dry runs-" he choked off as he understood the gravity of the situation. The intel was dicey to say the least and the reason why Special Forces were usually so good at what they did was mainly because they practiced endlessly. Urban fighting wasn't ever really taught it was practiced and the only difference between practicing and real warfare in Issad's experience was that the enemy actually shot back. Mossad SF practiced with live rounds and their shooting was perfect.

But raiding a nuclear launch silo was something even the Mossad had never prepared for, but expected them to learn on the fly. Literally in this case.

"We will compensate." The captain said stiffly probably noting that Issad was Palestinian by birth. So some still didn't trust him, even if he had fought side by side so loyally? This would be his crucible then. After this operation called COVENANT, no one could deny that he had tried to save Israel.  
"If you have to stay outside for more than ten minutes you will absorb enough Alpha radiation particles to kill you. Do not let that happen. Once we hit the ground each team will attack the complexes through the entrance tunnels and split into their respetive fireteams. One will head toward the nuclear launch control to disable launch protocols, the other to destroy the rockets themselves. The rockets are two stage supersonic ballistic missiles so they will be toughened, roughly half a kilo of semtex should create a large enough hole in the missiles that should they launch they will spill too much fuel and land in the wastes of Iraq.

Issad quickly did the mental math. The entire 200 man SF brigade was operating here, and if each team were taking a target…there had to be at least twenty silos to destroy. That meant enough missiles to glass Israel six times over if they each carried multiple nuclear warheads (which they would, the Iranians had copied the American ballistic missile designs in so many ways).

"We go in heavy, all of us." The captain said. "Extra ammunition, reconnaissance spheres, future force gear, heartbeat sensors and disruptors. Shoot straight men, Israel is counting on you."


	17. shooter

"We've got one more assignment." Variable said over the secured channel. "the Turkish president is giving a speech today in an open air plaza along with most of the heads of state. Jakob wants them eliminated."

"That would be murder…" Zilich objected before realizing they were at war. They were driving in a blacked out van toward the Istanbul plaza where the speech would be held.

"Avi says that they made their choice allying themselves with terrorists. It'll send a clear message that none who aids PLO forces will be safe."

"And who knows," Peled said darkly as he checked his weapon, "We might be taking revenge for Zion if those nukes hit."

"Nice to know you're an optimist." Dolan muttered and looked at herself. She was in a dress and burka like traditional Shiite muslims wore. She didn't see it as insulting as a woman, she knew that muslims saw it as a sign of respect and love. In fact she noted with an ironic chuckle for herself, the reason the burka had been instituted is because they felt that _men_ were the ones who needed controlling. Looks weren't everything. The burka covered her from head to toe and concealed her entire body but her eyes.

They also concealed the MicroTar-21 automatic that was strapped to her right thigh and in a rather awkward place to draw it. The burka drew stares however, even in a muslim as a place as Istanbul people regarded traditionalists as _radicals;_ it had appeared the age of terror hadn't left Istanbul either.

There were probably plenty of armed guards on the roofs of the city, a problem for Homer Johnston, their team sniper who would be carrying out the assassination of the president; Dolan strode briskly past a guard who checked what looked like a portable satellite dish but she recognized it as a heartbeat sensor. They weren't so good in crowded areas, but he would probably be bringing it to the roof where their sensor could tell them if someone was out of place. Of course she hoped that the man wasn't being _too_ observant, she had her sensor disruptor activated at the moment so she would show up as nothing more than a blank spot on the scanner.

"Tangent- in position and on target…" Homer whispered through the radio. The plaza was full of bustling people in suits and dresses. It was usually a bustling open air market but it had been converted for the speech today. Dolan flicked her eyes toward the roofs and counted the guards.

"Cosine two here, I think there's at least a dozen guards."

"negative that." Peled interjected. "Sensor shows a dozen on the roof so there's more on the ground."

"How many do you think are dressed up as bystanders?"

"Probably a few, we might have to cut the whole mow them down thing." Variable admitted.

"Confirm that? You want us to only eliminate the head of state?"

"Confirm." Variable said firmly. "Cosine team move to the EV point and cover Tangent while he bolts. Secant do you copy?"

"Copy, Mr. C, I think we can pop a grenade from where we are. Should get a few of them."

"Don't do it JC, pull back."

"We'll be safe. I've got a cornershot."

Dolan mutely wondered how he'd managed to sneak that past the guards but then shook it off as she swiftly turned around and hurried back. She brushed into a guard roughly. He turned and chattered something in Turkish. Dolan shook her head and moved on but was roughly hauled back by the man. He was probably asking for an apology but Dolan didn't speak Turkish and tried saying something in Arabic.

The man lifted the strap off of his pistol holster and held out a hand in a gesture that said _Identification_.

"I'm in trouble here…" She whispered into her mike while she fumbled for her stuff. She didn't have identification, she had an assault weapon on her if they searched her…

Homer Johnston settled into his practiced sniper routine. It had been a long time since he had held a rifle in the field but he had done it so many times on the range it really was no different. His Remmington 700 had been cleaned and polished the night before and the 12x zoom optical was of his own hunting rifle from his home in Alabama. The ugly black Kevlar stock had soot rubbed onto it and the outer barrel slotted neatly into a drain PVC pipe. He had drilled that himself and had taken over an hour to do it without anyone noticing. He'd broken into this apartment building that happened to overlook the plaza and he had a perfect angle on the podium where the president now stood to give his opening speech.

The only way homer could even see him was the little slit in the bricks he had carved out so that his optics could see. He was sitting "Indian style", possibly the most awkward position a sniper could shoot from and the stand (not bipod) had to be placed in a very awkward place just in front of his crotch. It would help steady it. His eyes left the optic for just a second to recheck the rest of his equipment; his thermometer was very sensitive and the temperature had crept up just a fraction meaning he'd have to rezero the rifle just a tad. He did so with a few winds on the optics to ensure that the bullet would travel the right distance to the target which was roughly 800 meters away. If that were the case the travel time would be about a second and a half. He settled into the role again.

One shot one kill.

His breathing slowed, letting his lungs consciously expand and deflate to slow the passage of blood into vessels which even at this distance might throw his aim off just a fraction. He became aware of the beating of his own heart, he had to apply a perfect amount of pressure on the trigger edge (two pounds to be exact) _between_ heartbeats to ensure the bullet wouldn't miss, the wind was negligible, a woman's hair flicked slightly in the breeze, a Styrofoam cup inched across a street. He lined up the crosshairs, centering them between the eyes of the president. In his prime, Johnston was able to put six successive shots into a hole the size of a dime at a range of a thousand meters. He hoped he still had it…

The crack of a sniper rifle boomed across the plaza and Dolan knew she had to act as the soldier turned for a second as it echoed through the streets. She pulled up her rifle from beneath her flowing robes and fired a three round burst into the man's neck before turning to run. The crump of a grenade followed shortly after.

Yes! The Turkish president's head jerked back as if hit by a car and turning his brain to pudding as the bullet passed through at a speed of 700 meters per second. Homer Johnston withdrew the big R700 rifle and quickly tossed it into the golfbag (he hated mistreating his rifle like that but needs must) zipped it up and strode briskly out of the room. He heard a grenade detonate in the distance.

Chavez saw the President's head jerk back suddenly and took his cue, squeezing the trigger of the cornershot with 30mm grenade attatchment to send the fragmentation exploding onto the stage where most of the Turkish heads of state were. He snapped the weapon off leaving him with merely the cornershot itself and not the grenade attatchment and sprinted out the building, snapping the 9mm attatchment. His escape route was planned and there was Stuart ready with the getaway car, door wide open to greet Chavez.

"Reaper check." Bronco Winters said in the morning light. Flying into the east was a disadvantage, he flipped down his mirrored lenses to compensate. It didn't help much.

"Disco check."

"Cataphract check."

"Baker check."

"Rodeo check."

"Jumper check."

There were around 80 strike planes heading over the irradiated wastes of Iraq and crossing into Iranian airspace for the first time in a decade possibly; and they were armed to the teeth: Reaper, Disco, and Cataphract flights were all F-35s and outfitted for air to and a limited air to ground capability with JSMs and AIM-10 quarrels. Baker was a flight of F-15 Stealth Eagles outfitted for air to air only and had explicit orders to attack whatever helicopters might show up. Rodeo of course flew their A-20 razorbacks and would hit whatever was on the ground. All the flights were escorting Jumper, the C-17 transport with its vital load of Mossad commandos.

"All flights, this is Oracle, we are picking up multiple radar signatures at one two zero angels twelve. Speed and profile matches Eurofighter typhoons. All flights stay on course."

"Eyes wide reapers." Bronco said and checked his weapons systems again. "This is Indian country. Jumper stay right behind us."

"I'm not going anywhere, American." Jumper's captain had a chuckle. "Just make sure you cover me."

"Will do Jumper."

"All flights, we are being hailed and ordered to turn around." Oracle interjected. "Bandits are plus twelve, Disco flight, snap to heading one two zero and splash me those bandits. You are weapons free."

"Copy Oracle." Disco's F-35s peeled away and headed southeast.

"Hang on, new radar sigs coming in at three three two." Oracle interrupted. "forty plus bogeys make them Sierra Uniform twenty sevens…They just dropped tanks and went Mach 1. Reaper, Baker, Cataphract, snap to intercepts; weapons are free.

Bronco brought his 8 Reapers around to head northeast and head off the enemy. The first radars began seeking locks…

"_Time on Target, two minutes."_ The pilot said said. _"ramps in thirty." _Issad hauled his parachute onto the back. Was it the blue strap that was his primary chute or was it the red one? No red was for emergencies, that was a secondary chute. The chemical warfare suit was all black, covering him from head to toe. He heard they'd been of the same make the british SAS used in their Iranian Embassy raid in the 1980s; The gas mask inhibited breathing a lot and the goggles obscured vision, the suit itself reduced their movements ever so slightly but it might have been enough to throw aiming off. It wasn't the ideal commando operation. The alarm buzzed and the ramp opened, letting the light flood into the hold. The Captain held up his hand, five fingers spread out, then made a pointing motion. Issad was in the first group. He nodded and gave them the "Go go go" signal. Issad sprinted out and jumped.

If there was anything that could make a human felt like flying, Issad decided it was probably jumping out of an airplane ten thousand feet above ground. The way the wind felt as it whipped around his chemical suit was exhilarating. The Heads Up Display booted up its skyjump software and the altimeter appeared on Issad's viewscreen. He was falling roughly at terminal velocity, and he wouldn't fall any faster than that. The target was marked by a NAV point at least ten kilometers out, and took the shape of six circular shaped bunkers with a blocky building out in front. Even as he looked he looked, two fighters streaked in from the west and sent the buildings to building hell with a pair of bombs. Issad moved his arms so that he angled directly toward the target building, he could feel the Tavor -21 assault rifle slap his chest as he fell and his stun grenades rattled against magazines. The sunlight glared against his visor and when Issad angled his head to glance upward he swerved sharply to the left after glimpsing another few dozen shapes leap out of their plane.

At five thousand feet, Issad yanked the blue handle and it felt as though he slammed into a wall. The chute expanded quickly and retarded Issad's falling speed quickly and knocked the wind out of him. he fumbled for the steering handles and angled the parachute toward the landing site.

He was the first on the ground, reaching a running stop as he hit the quick release, rolled free from the parachute and snapped his rifle up and training on imaginary threats.

They suddenly weren't so imaginary, he saw a shape out in the distance drop and the sand kicked up around him as bullets snapped the air. "Contact tango!" he shouted and snapped the red dot sight onto the far off target, the TAR-21 was a 300 meter standing headshot and it didn't disappoint even now. Issad double tapped the trigger lightly and dropped the man far off.

What had started as one man suddenly became a dozen, and Issad's squad mates fell in around him as they landed and brought their weapons up. Israeli commandos began their infantry battle against their terrorist enemy in the sands.


	18. Fire

"Comrade General" the lieutenant inside the kingspider looked over. "air force reports ready."

"the 24th is in position General." A second reported.

"The missile is armed and waiting." The call came over the radio.

"ready for Uplink crash sir." The colonel in charge of electronic operations said from his station.

Andreyev still wore his colonel's pips, it felt so strange to have been brevetted up two ranks in a message that hadn't even been three lines long, but the 24th Motor rifle was his now, and it was its weight that he could feel as if a yoke had been dropped onto his shoulders. He booted up the tactical computer and the lights representing the army formation winked onto the display. He ran his eyes over his forces one last time and saw the rocket, the massive Hydrogen missile that lay a kilometer away.

"Signal Go to all units." He breathed.

"Elevate twenty degrees and _fire_!"

The missile launcher had the singular purpose of raising the most destructive conventional weapon in the Russian's arsenal and sending it off a safe distance away. The missile was designated a ZHU-90, a copy of the American Tomahawk cruise missile but with upgraded land skimming components and greater accuracy, upon orders to launch, the missile truck angled its weapon upward twenty degrees, secured itself to the ground via metal rods (a safety measure due to the force of the missile launch actually causing the truck to tumble like a ball), locked down the safety flaps to cover windows and the commander hit the big red launch button (the irony of an actual big red launch button was not lost on him).

The missile lifted off slowly and picked up speed rocketing into the sky and leveling out at 30 thousand feet to enter its programmed trajectory towards Hanburg. Two minutes later it reached Mach 1.

Sopot had hefted his F2000 and mounted on top of the Badger IFV where most of his other men were sitting. It was much faster to disembark if one was riding on top, he'd learned from the time he was running from the Russians.

But now he was bringing the fight _towards_ them and that certainly felt good. Those were friendly helicopters up there, cheetah gunships moving to head off any Russian tanks lying in wait. Friendly European aircraft streaked contrails in the skies above. There were a dozen of them and heading east…

No wait, there were thirteen, one was heading west and-

The Russian Hydrogen FAE missile exploded in a massive airburst on causing destruction the scale of a tactical nuclear warhead. The fires vaporized and charred the men immediately below, Poland suddenly had a scar of black earth with an average raidius of three miles. The Russian coordination for this strike was perfect. Just a minute before the last firewall was penetrated and the Russians initiated a massive electronics crash which disabled the Satellite uplinks and effectively eliminated the European's eyes in the sky.

The European fighters suddenly had been cut off by their land based radar and their squadron commander immediately ordered them to illuminate their radars.

The Russian T-50 stealth fighters immediately detected radar emissions coming from the fighters and angled in to fire at close range.

The kills were perfect, the entire squadron wiped out in a matter of deadly seconds. That cleared the way for Russian Su-47 ground attack Slamhounds which streaked in and began dropping smaller Fuel Air Explosives in the city of Hanburg. The Russian ground units rumbled across the charred ground.

"What do you mean they're blacked out?" Bankole roared.

"The Russians initiated a massive satellite uplink crash at Hanburg sir. We've lost contact with all the satellites under its control-" CINCSPACE/CYBER began but Bankole cut him off with a glare, the Video chat in Paris was still online and was clear enough to show that Bankole was not a happy man at all.

"Do you mean to tell me, that after directing a satellite to fire on European soil, the Russians are still able to take the ground and complete their objective from us?" Bankole said coldly.

"That is unfortunately correct." His aide said.

"It is possible that the units we have in place around the city are able to continue to defend Hanburg?" CINCSPACE/CYBER tried a pitiful attempt at recovering.

"They will be at a terrible disadvantage without coordination, those satellites are the reason our forces are such an effective fighting unit." Bankole shook his head. Now it would be imperative that his diplomatic gamble in the Middle East succeed. The European federation would need the help of Turkey more than ever.

"Break left!" Bronco shouted, and Reaper four snaprolled left to give Bronco a clear shot at the SU-27 on his tail. The dogfight had closed into the aerial distances of a knife fight, close and personal. The Israeli fighters had finished all their long range weapons and closed the distance to prevent the Lebanese fighters from using their own ranged weapons. Bronco squeezed the trigger and stitched a quick two second deflection shot off the passing fighters left fuelselage.

"Got him!"

"Good kill lead!"

This was becoming hell. Bronco only had a single JSM left and had made enough kills to make Ace in this one engagement, but these Lebanese kept coming. There were probably forty fighters on both sides in this engagement alone, and they weren't as unskilled as most people made them out to be. They were pilots, the cream of the crop in the military and Bronco usually had a healthy respect for all of them. It was way he never underestimated these people. Bronco had never really thought about it before, how he was killing people he might have been happy to have a beer with. He snapped his fighter in a wide turn searching for more of these possible friends to kill.

The compound was coming alive. Issad could hear the alarms going off inside as the station became alerted to the presence of the IDF commandos. The doors were locked, but they weren't the sealed doors requiring heavy explosives. Issad gestured for a breaching grenade.

A commando snapped the breaching grenade on the tip of his rifle while the other commandos stacked a little bit farther away from the doors than usual. The grenade, essentially a metal rod, fired off the tip of the rifle and hit the door, detonating a shaped charge on impact, blowing the door inward off its hinges. A commando tossed a semtex explosive inside and flipped the detonator sending a few of the greeting party flying outward. Issad rushed in rifle raised, immediately double tapping the head of a man who was rising, dazed and now dead.

It was killing house time. The killing house was the practice area's for the Mossad's and IDF urban warfare training. The rounds were always live, it was something the IDF copied from the British. Issad and his partner Benjamin went room by room, hunting for tangos.

"Clear!"

"clear!"

"_Clear!"_ There were twenty commandos per silo and the PLI terrorists became more and more stubborn as they went, casualties were light, but movement became bogged down as they came across more and more heavily armed men, some wearing the military uniforms of the Iranian military, others wearing plainclothes but all in ballistic vests. The Tavor commando's heavy 7.62, full metal jacket rounds easily tore through the body armor. Return fire was inaccurate.

Issad arrived at the rocket holding area, his objective. The door here was heavy reinforced steel, the lieutenant attatched detchord to the edges and ordered everyone to stand clear.

"_fire in the hole!"_ the blast and smoke filled the hall and Issad ran forward almost running smack into the door.

"Shit!" Isad said. "It barely scratched the paint!"

"This will do it." The Lieutenant said placing the detchord at the center of the door this time, adding more as well. They scrambled back again.

"_Fire in the hole!"_ the door exploded inward, impacting the other side with a distinctive _clang_, Issad rushed through, on point again. The inside was filled with orange mist, and there was a very peculiar smell. He heard hissing and his eyes locked onto a broken pipe-

"_Shit! The rockets are fueled!" _he shouted into the cross com.

"Say again?" the Captain sounded very alarmed.

"_The fucking missiles are fueled get out!"_ Issad turned to run, gesturing for the others to get out just as he began to notice the tremor at his feet. If the missiles were fueled and he had broken the gas into it, they ran risk of sending themselves and the entire silo up in flames. "_Everyone OUT!"_

"Team blue placing charges…"

"Team green, target destroyed…"

"Team Gold, missile launch!"

"Say again?" the captain said over the intercom.

"We have a missile launch on Silo three!"

"Missile launching in silo four!" the lieutenant of Issad's team shouted.

"Missile la-" Grey team's leader cut out suddenly. The tremor was loud and seemed to be all around Issad. He scrambled through the hallways being very aware that there was a distinctive heat and light rushing up behind him. The exit to the silo was just ahead, he hauled one of his commando comrades up and out, leaping to the side just as the flames jetted out, engulfing where they had just been.

Issad panted and looked up, seeing the blunted nose of a nuclear missile lift off slowly like a tower being erected. The flames belched out like hellfire as it journeyed skyward and then to the Holy land, his home, where it would destroy everyone he'd loved and cared about… no…no…He'd failed….

The Mossad Captain watched his commando teams check in via the cross com. Grey team had vanished off the face of the earth, blue team had just checked in that they were blowing their target before getting wiped out as well. The Semtex explosives were good for destroying their targets all right, but also did a good job of taking the twenty men who had placed them out as well. The Captain had been lucky enough that his rocket hadn't been fueled, perhaps something was wrong with it.

He'd been briefed on the capabilities of the 2 stage ICBMs Iran had, they would enter extreme low orbit or HALO, then turn downward for a Mach 6 dive onto its target and shower its 10 independent warheads on preprogrammed targets.

Israel didn't even _have_ ten major cities, an attack from even one would wipe out the nation's infrastructure.

And there were three launching right now.

The only thing he could do was radio in the bad news.


	19. John Adams

"What's that?" Reaper nine said. Bronco became aware of a bright flash off to his right, and he looked.

"oh _shit!_" was all Bronco could say, he could see one missile already two high for him to hit, he was out of missiles. But he was a pilot and he was trained to take action when danger was near. He wasn't the type to sit out armaggedon anyway.

He had a hundred rounds in his cannon left, enough for maybe a two second burst. Would a 20mm Vulcan even penetrate the outer plating of the missile? He'd find out soon enough.

"I'm on the second missile!" he said and hauled the stick right to bring the target pip onto the rising cylinder and cone. He was out of range, he kicked in his afterburners and hauled the stick upward climbing above the clouds and punching through mach one. At two klicks, he was in gun range. His HUD screeched a good lock and his finger tightened the trigger.

"_Guns guns guns!_"

Red staccato tracers lanced out toward the target, some fell short and suddenly, Bronco was guns dry. The tracer's struck the target trailing down across the edge. Something punched through the fuel cells, the bottom exploded and gave way, fragmenting into a fiery flower that flailed all the way down to the ground.

"Good _shot lead!"_ Reaper nine said. "I'm on the third! _Guns guns guns!"_

The gout of flame from _that_ explosion evaporated the clouds almost immediately underneath Bronco and the massive rising heat wave kicked the tail of his fighter and forced it into a flat spin.

"Reaper one, going down…" he said surprisingly calm. He struggled with the stick and rudders, they were electronically controlled now so they didn't force themselves to the right as they would in the old days but the fighter's safety measures refused to turn it for fear of breaking the fighter apart. Shit, he could _feel_ the G's and he was wearing a G diffuser suit the fighter nosed downward but continued its spin, Bronco could feel the blood rushing into his head. "Reaper one going down…"

"Punch out lead! Punch out!

Bronco was trying but something wouldn't let him reach for that lever at his crotch. Instead his hands remained tight on the throttle and stick. He was a pilot to the bone and like a navy captain of old, he was going down with his bird.

"Reaper one going down…"

The ground was sandy beige, coming up quickly as it mixed with sky in a whirl of contrasting colors…His fighter alarm beat insesintly as the programming tried to alert Bronco that his multimillion dollar craft was about to die with him. For some reason, that snapped him. He hauled the stick left one last time and punched up the afterburners and stomped left.

The fighter finally responded.

It was almost as if Bronco became one with the F-35 lightning at that point, there was a great shriek of steel as he felt something on the fighter give way, Bronco felt it as though something were ripping out his left arm. But the fighter suddenly righted itself and Bronco had control. He cut afterburners and hauled on the stick as the altimeter scrolled dangerously fast towards zero….

Six meters from the ground half of Bronco's fighter made it off the ground, his plane kicked up the radioactive dust around it as the F-35 lightning boosted towards the sky to claim dominance in its home once again.

"Holy _Shit _lead!" someone said.

"They can't pay me enough for this." Bronco said suddenly aware that he was out of breath. The salty sweat stung his eyes and he lifted his HUD visor to wipe it. The fighter was listing to the left slightly, Bronco had to get that gimble checked when he got back to base. His fuel was leaking as well, an extra tank up before he got back then.

"No shit man, I hope that damage is coming out of _your_ check."

"what happened?" Bronco asked, finally placing the pilots voice as reaper two, and his wingmate.

"Take a look at your nine o'clock lead."

The wing should have been there but it was gone, completely. The G forces had been so great that they had torn off the wing when Bronco tried to reorient. Maybe it was something in the radioactive air that made the structure decay like that, Bronco had no clue how he was still even _airborne_ let alone alive. He coughed and he felt something wet in his mask.

"_Jesus living fuck!" _he gasped and ripped the mask off to glance at the blood he'd coughed up. He felt very weak.

"You said it. You all good Bronco?"

"_Reaper lead, this is Oracle, how you holding up there?"_

"I'm fine Oracle." Bronco panted into the mask radio. "it took a lot out of me."

"_You sure about that? Looks like ya got clipped pretty good."_

"I'm sure. Oracle I'm leaking fuel here-"

"_Jordanian tanker is already enroute. They'll be at your position in two mikes."_

It was a good thing that the radical turn hadn't torn off his right side, Bronco thought quietely. That was the side the refueling stud was on.

Bronco took a look backwards at the contrail of the missile that had gotten away. There wouldn't be anything to stop it, not even Bronco in his one winged fighter.

He'd be landing at a destroyed base in a couple hours.

"Begin the drill." CINC NORAD said and hit the timer on his laptop. Sending the command to both the computers here in Cheyenne mountain and in Norfolk, the Satcrew was being tested as well.

"Detecting thermal blooms on Map grid five five seven zero." The tracking officer called.

"Multiple blooms at five five seven zero confirmed." The commanding officer of the Norfolk Uplink site said over the SATCOM.

"Orienting _John Adams_ overhead now." CINC NORAD had put in the idea for naming all the kinetic weapons platforms after the nation's founding fathers. It had gone over well with Becerra and his conservative government. Becerra was a man of action. And…

"Hold it, blooms are gone…" the tracking officer said. CINC NORAD looked up at the OPS center screen which should have been displaying the drill in full color but where the thermal blooms had been detected was now a barren sea of cold cold nothing.

"Rescan on all frequencies." CINC NORAD ordered as he looked down at his laptop and did the same as well. Damn all this modern technology and its sensitive wiring, nothing ever seemed to work right now and you couldn't give it a good slap to get it working again…

"There, map grid seven zero niner two." The tracking officer called again. CINC NORAD typed in the coordinates on his laptop and saw the multiple heat signatures there in Iran? That wasn't part of the scenario, the KinWeps platform was over the southeastern Atlantic and could certainly reach a target in Iran though, but why did the computer glitch like that?"

"Tracking party confirm thermal blooms at designated coordinates." He called.

"Right there sir. Definitely detecting heat sigs."

"Here too NORAD." Norfolk Uplink called.

"Strange." CINC NORAD muttered under his breath. He brought up the command prompt and ran through a virus scan. Nothing, he'd just cleaned it an hour ago too. So why did it glitch so suddenly like this? He checked the drill timer…

It was gone, replaced by the red mission timer.

He wondered what in the world was going on with his computer.

"That's a detatchment there…yes that's detatchment. NORAD we have a confirmed launch at the designated launch site."

"Right there…tracking…" the crew at Norfolk said and the Ops center screen zoomed on the red line that was inching its way upward from what used to be Iran.

"Sir." The XO walked over and showed his laptop. He checked NORAD's. "Yours too?"

"Yeah, what does it mean?"

"Means it ain't no fuckin drill sir." The XO said and set the laptop down calmly. Oh fuck! CINC NORAD managed to prevent himself from saying it out loud. "How are we getting the picture is beyond me though."

"The Stealth sat." CINC NORAD breathed. "Fuckin A we got lucky…"

"Sir we have a confirmed ballistic inbound at this time." The Tracking officer said.

"Should be entering low orbit in thirty minutes." The Weapons officer said.

"Sounds about right." TACCO agreed.

"Sir." XO walked calmly over to the weapon release boxes and punched in the safety release code. NORAD did the same but not so calmly. The safety box opened to reveal a pair of key holes which, if turned, would activate all the kinetic weapons satellites above the USA. He and the XO slotted their keys in.

"Three, two one _turn_." CINC NORAD said and with a simple click, the weapons were armed and the electronic signal would immediately be sent to all Uplink sites across the US and automatically set them to DEFCON 1.

The alarm rang here in Cheyenne mountain as well.

"What's that?" the TACCO said and looked up to CINC NORAD and his XO with very childish eyes.

"This isn't a drill anymore folks." He said into the intercom. He saw all the men inside the Ops center gulp simultaneously and turn back to their work stations.

"Tracking party calculate time to impact?"

"Six hours sir, if it's a Al Jafi class ICBM." The TACCO said.

The weapon party in Norfolk were already working, maneuvering officers were already reorienting the _John Adams_ to point and fire its Tungsten 20 meter long rods at the far off missile. The Satellite was really moved that far, and the missile was at the edge of its range.

"Shouldn't the Europeans be shooting it down now?" the XO said.

"They ain't fucking doing it." CINC NORAD growled and clenched his fists.

"Sir… Ballistic trajectory isn't angled toward the US, it doesn't have enough speed and fuel." The CO at Norfolk noted.

CINCNORAD breathed.

"If I had to take a stab at anything it'd probably be hitting Israel." CINCNORAD thought about that. Israel was still officially a US ally, and it was NORAD's official duty to protect not only America from nuclear attack, but her interests as well. Wasn't helping out a friend an interest? He'd need authority from the American Eagle himself it he wanted to do this though.

"Time to impact?"

"Two hours." TACCO said from his station. Becerra would be fucking asleep right now. He telephoned him anyway.

"_I'm, sorry sir, but the president is unable to be reached at the moment…"_

"Well fucking get him on the line and tell him I'm in the middle of a shooting war here."

"_He is currently meeting with his staff…"_ CINCNORAD slapped the cell phone shut. Fuck it.

"Weapons are free on my authority." CINC NORAD ordered over the crosscom to the team at Norfolk.

"Yes sir."

"sir?" the XO whispered.

"I'll take full responsibility for what happens here." CINC NORAD said with a grim smile. "And look at the bright side, if American Eagle decides to fire me you'll get my job."

"I sort of don't want it." XO chuckled darkly.

"Can you take the shot commander?" he said into the radio.

"Working on the solution now." The CO at Norfolk.

"right there…_tracking_…"

"Speed three thousand…time on target, thirty minutes…."

"Give it a full spread WEPO" CO Norfolk ordered over the intercom. CINCNORAD had the entire radio feed broadcasted over the Ops Center speakers.

"Firing solution." The Norfolk WEPO breathed. "Best window of opportunity in the next fifteen seconds."

"Give me specifics." CO Norfolk said.

"Best chance of a hit is at the highest azimuth with a six rod spread. If we take the shot in the next…twelve sir, we'll have weapon impact in the next four minutes."

"Take the shot." CINC NORAD ordered and prayed it would work. The John Adams KinWep platform had six rods, they would have to be reloaded some time in the future but JFK space center was offline. John Adams would be shooting blanks for the near future...

"Spooling up Rods from God now."

"Tracking party…"

"On target…_tracking_."

"Fire sequence one through six _set._"

"_Fire._"

John Adams, ABM – 02, pumped a little hydrogen gas out to turn its cone tipped tungsten fin equipped depleted uranium rods toward its miniscule target. The Magnetic Accelerator unit began to power up all six of its throwers and fired them all in a ten second sequence. All six rods were thrown at a speed of Mach 2, much slower than usual because of the target it was supposed to it.

The Kinetic weapons platforms of the United States of America were designed with the primary intention of destroying ICBMs in midflight, but had a secondary mission role. In a desperate time, the Rods could target the ground and hit with such a force that they would cause an explosion on the scale of a tactical nuclear warhead without the radiological mess.

It was fulfilling its first mission role now, but its standard firing speed of Mach 3 was too fast. The six rods fired began its orbital trajectories toward the rising Iranian missile, burning their fuel (usually used to slow down the rods) in rapid attempts to turn and hit the target. The "Rods from God" were never a very accurate weapon, they didn't have to be with a destruction on the scale of a nuke, but here they needed pinpoint accuracy.

The Iranian Al Jafi 2 stage rocket began to level out just as the first and second rods missed cleanly.

"rod Three miss…rod four…miss."

"Shit." CO Norfolk said. "It was a spread but we're cutting this close."

"You said it." CINC NORAD mumbled to himself. If he let this one hit, he'd have failed his duty as defender against nuclear attack. He'd be condemning thousands of innocents to death. He watched the tracking screen with interest.

"Missile is arming its warheads…" the TACCO in Cheyenne mountain said. The Al Jafi missile had ten independent nuclear warheads on the scale of ten megatons.

"Rod five… fuck that's a miss…Rod si-hit! That's a hit! That's a Goddamn fucking hit!" the screen flashed as the sixth and final rod slammed into the missile, striking it dead center and knocking it off its trajectory and carrying it spaceward. The teams in Cheyenne mountain and in Norfolk rose to cheer.

"Confirm that!" CINCNORAD snapped into the radio.

"That's confirmed we have debris in Low Orbit sir! Splash one fucking nuke!"

"Holy shit!" the XO was actually _crying_. Tears of relief streamed out of his eyes, he wiped them.

"That was fucking _close!_"

"XO." CINC NORAD held out his hand to shake, and the XO took it and pulled CINCNORAD in for a relieved hug which CINCNORAD allowed.

"How does it feel to save a nation sir?"


	20. Justifying the means

Jerusalem was still standing by the time all the pilots returned to their stations. And the people in the streets were cheering as though it were the end of the war. It wasn't of course, Israel's enemies were still many and they were still fighting hard but the relief that everything this nation and its people stayed alive for was _still here_ was overwhelming. People prayed in the streets, mostly Jewish but some Christian and even many Muslims prayed openly and nobody cared. Bronco brought the living half of his bird down onto the tarmac in a slow and steady vertical landing. By the time he shut off the fighter and climbed out, there were legions of ground crewmen who took time off of clearing out the fighter and debris to slap Winters heartily on the back and congratulations on being someone who could claim kill on a _nuclear missile_. Shit he'd need a lot of paint for that one…

The F-35 that had served him for so long was scorched almost jet black, and the entire left wing was gone. It was a miracle he'd been able to stay aloft. His trip back was six hours long, he'd kept his speed at 400 knots and was actually slow enough, for the Goshawks with their IDF commandos to catch up with him on the return leg.

The other flights back had stayed with him and the experience was touching; here he was, a mercenary pilot in all respects and these IAF pilots treated him like one of their own. Fuck man maybe he should have reenlisted. Money wasn't everything. Bronco looked around and saw the IDF Goshawks land to disembark their weary commandos. One of the men had his helmet removed.

He was Palestinian by the look of him, darker skinned and more heavily browed than the Jews that usually made up the Spec Ops of Israel; that surprised Bronco. The man seemed to be aware Bronco was staring at him and waved jauntily. Bronco waved back.

"Stalemate." Bankole whispered and looked at the map. The Russian attacks had been spoiled just barely, by vicious counter air by enraged Polish pilots. At least most of them were Polish anyway, the destruction of a part of their country probably resonated with each of them even now.

The units that had occupied Hanburg had been wiped out almost to the man, none of the brave Polish defenders who saw action around Warsaw were alive anymore. At least not to Bankole's knowledge.

He was hearing bad things about Iceland as well, the Americans were moving in and beginning to fly air raids along Spain and Norway. Bankole would have to pull units to defend those shorelines, he would not make the mistake the Germans made earlier by letting the Americans pool resources around a landing zone and then destroying them. The European federation could still win here but certainly not by attacking. Now forced to fight a two front war, Europe's morale would be strained to its limit.

"Bring the chief's of staff in." he told his aide. He would have to hold a new council to determine the best strategies of which to force a ceasefire on both fronts.

Andreyev and his units were advancing again, the way a Russian should always have fought in war, facing the enemy. You do not turn your back on the wolf, he had learned. The war would go on, and in war, Andreyev would practice his craft of hunting. It was so much better to be hunting men than it was to hunt animals. Man was the ultimate hunter after all, and to Andreyev, they were the ultimate prey.

Sopot blinked his eyes open to stare at the white washed ceiling.

"Good morning Comrade." He tried to turn his head but was immediately rebuked by a lancing pain that shot through him. he almost screamed.

"Do not move like that again." A man with a kind face leaned over and smiled. "You have been badly burned from the waist up."

"What happened?" He mumbled in German. The doctor switched from Polish to that language just as quickly.

"It is good that you switch to German for you see, my Polish is not so good." The doctor chuckled. "You were caught in an explosion Comrade. Your comrades are safe for now, but you were badly injured as you no doubt surmised."

"What's happening?"

"You are in a hospital. Don't worry, rambling is a psychological effect. Its simply shock."

"Who are you?"

"My name is Doctor Sergei Nikoleivich."

Sopot stiffened, he wasn't shocked enough to know that this man was a Russian and that meant he was behind enemy lines and captured.

"Ah you understand it now." The Doctor nodded gravely. "Do not worry comrade, we do not kill prisoners or treat them harshly anymore. We have no reason to interrogate you because the war in the East is over. You in Europe have lost and in due time you will be returned there. My job is to simply treat men like you and get you back to duty."

"Sopot, Illych, Serial number seven seven six four two…"

"You speak in Polish again." the Doctor remarked. "Good heavens you must think I'm lying to you. I apologize but we really do not have work camps for you." The doctor chuckled.

"Sopot Illych, Serial number…"

"I will see you tomorrow." The doctor said and injected another dose of depressant into his IV. He would talk in due time of course, the drugs would do that for him. But the doctor always told the truth when it came to POWs. Russia would need to set a good example for the world once it was under her control and mistreating prisoners was no way to start.

"The mental stress, you have to understand." The doctor repeated.

"I know but we are not allowed to see him?" Jama asked, all the bridge crew were present while INS Hamas was in port for repairs. The quiet war hospital was a shocking juxtaposition to the festival on the streets of Tel Aviv (Jama has even seen children play on the burnt out hulks of tanks).

"No one but me is allowed. His case is that serious, he has suffered major stress and has developed stomach ulcers from some unknown previous condition. The best treatment I can give him is rest, but there is no telling how long he will be under." The Doctor admitted.

"Would it not help-"

"No. As his Psychiatrist I believe that your presence would only hope to dehabilitate him more, he will feel as though he let you all down."

"He didn't let us down." The First officer protested. "Stress is natural-"

"But he will feel as though he let you down anyway. Please he must have rest."

"Come on." Jama said and fenced his crew off from the doorway. "the Captain needs it. Besides I owe you all a drink."

The doctor sighed and went back to work.

"Spy work isn't what I expected it to be." Dolan admitted over the volume of the music in the van.

"Its not what I'm used to either." JC Chavez laughed. "You Israeli boys play for keeps!"

"We live on the edge." Zilich laughed too. "We are Mossad after all."

"The feeling after a mission accomplished is always the same though." Clark said from the driver's seat. "Its always a little bittersweet, you finished your mission but you always have another tomorrow. Its thankless."

"We don't mind." Peled punched his old friend lightly in the arm. "we helped save Israel, all of us. It was a good job."

"There's one for the Books Dolan agreed and looked out the windows. The streets looked tantalizingly familiar. They hadn't managed to sneak on a flight out but had shipped all their equipment discreetly. They were now officially tourists in the great city of Istanbul.

"Hey Clark, where are we headed?" Dolan asked.

"I seem to remember a club that I almost got my ass shot off in two days ago. Lets go see if they cleaned up!"


End file.
